Make the switch to wind power

Switch to 100% Green-E windpower through Groundswell.

You’ll reduce your carbon footprint and Memorial gets $10 for each parishioner or friend who makes the switch!

It’s easy and economical to make the switch.  Just click on this link to enroll.  https://groundswell.org/clean-energy/wind-power/enroll/.

You will see the prices available for BGE customers.  Choose a 1-year contract, currently priced at 8.8 cents per kilowatt hour, or a 2-year contract at 8.7 cents.  Put in your personal information, and then select Memorial Episcopal Church on the drop-down list.  You will then be directed to the WGL website for the actual enrollment.  You will need to have your BGE bill ready, because you’ll need your account number and your customer choice ID number (on the BGE bill it’s the number to the right of the multi-colored circle on the front page).

Anyone who pays an electric bill, regardless of whether they rent an apartment or own a home, can sign up for a 1 or 2-year contract.  You will NOT receive a second bill and you will simply see a change in your electricity supplier from BGE to WGL.  If you are currently under contract with an electricity supplier other than BGE, you may not be able to enroll until your contract is up.

Grey and Vaughn as our spiritual and environmental leaders have already signed up!  Barbara Cates and Dick Williams regret that they are stuck for now in more expensive windpower contracts, also with WGL, but can attest that the power keeps working just as well as the old dirty power did. 

Who was Mark and why do we read him?

Join us for coffee, donuts and a study of The Book of Mark this Sunday and for four Sundays in January, 9:30 to 10:15 in the Upper Parish Hall right after Faith at 8. 

Mark is the first Gospel and the shortest – the story of Jesus that can be read in 40 minutes.

This Sunday we’ll be playing a game of identify the famous quotes from Mark. We’ll map out the whole story in one easy format.

If you know nothing about the Book of Mark, or everything, we need you.

Have you ever wondered why parts of Mark are read on 35 Sundays this church year? Why is Mark so important? What meaning does it have today?

Learn the whole story in one easy format. Be able to impress your friends with your knowledge of Scripture. Deepen your intellectual and spiritual connections.

Bruno Reich

The holidays come to Linden Park Apartments

“Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!”

Residents of Linden Park were treated to a chorus of people ages 4-84 singing Christmas last Sunday Afternoon during the annual holiday party. Members of Memorial, Bolton Hill residents, and community members from around the area joined the residents for a festive luncheon with punch, hot cider, sandwiches and rolls and a LOT of desert.

Neighbor Peter Van Buren provided the musical entertainment, with assists from Monty Howard, Barbara Cates, and Erin Kelly, along with some of Memorial’s youngest members. Our Intern Bruno Reich organized the event in conjunction with the Linden Park resident services coordinator Ruth Royster, ensuring that there was a plenty of food, drink, and good cheer to go around.

Memorial has had a long history supporting Linden Park (formerly Memorial Apartments), and the residents were grateful to see that tradition continue.

Thanks to everyone who volunteered, baked, cooked, and sang.

Bolton Hill Can Drive 2017 - sponsored by the Samaritan Community

This coming Sunday, December 17, between 12:30 pm and 1:30 pm volunteers and children will be coming around the neighborhood to pick up canned goods and other non-perishable items to give to those in need this Christmas. If you live in the neighborhood, please feel free to put your items on your front stoop. If you do not live in the neighborhood, but would like to contribute, you can bring your items to church at the 10:30 service or drop them off at Memorial that afternoon. Thank you for your support.

Christmas Services

Christmas Eve! Christmas Day! 

Advent is a season of patience and preparation, and Christmas is the celebration for which we have been waiting and preparing (somewhat) patiently. This year at Memorial we will have four services on Christmas Eve – splendor and joy from 8 am to midnight. We hope that most of you will join us for at least one of these services. 

Faith @ 8, our Contemporary Eucharist service, will celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Advent at 8:00 am in Upper Farnham Hall. Faith @ 8 is more discussion based and free-flowing than the traditional services at Memorial, and as such engages an entirely different side of your brain. If you have ever felt that traditional services leave you with too many questions and no one to ask, Faith @ 8 may be exactly what you’ve been looking for. All are welcome!

At 10:30 am we celebrate the Fourth Sunday of Advent with Holy Eucharist, Rite II. With choir and acolytes and welcomers and all, we will close out the season of anticipation in glorious fashion and immediately dive in to Christmas Eve with the “greening of the church” and the assembly of Angel Baskets.

An annual tradition at Memorial, we decorate the church with fresh cut greens and trees from Feldhof Farm. Members of the congregation will travel to Feldhof Farm on Saturday the 16th to choose and cut the trees for the church, which the Fanning family generously donate in memory of Dougie Wells. On Sunday after church we will put up all the trees and arrange the greens, while those who wish to assemble Angel Baskets for members of the congregation who may be in need this Christmas. 

Once the greening is completed we will take a brief, but well earned, break before returning for the 5:00 pm Christmas Pageant service. At 5:00 the service is centered around the story of Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus, as portrayed by the youth of Memorial. It’s the same story and many of the same words that we will hear later in the evening, but with a special interpretation that only children can give it. If you would like to be in bed sooner, rather than later, this is the service for you.

At last, at 10:00 pm, the choir and musical guests will begin the last preparations for the arrival of Christmas. The service, sometimes referred to as “Midnight Mass” will begin at 10:30. With candlelight and all the music you remember this is one of the highlights of the liturgical year, and it comes right at the beginning! The service will end just before midnight with joy and fellowship and blessings of peace on earth and goodwill to all. This is, for many of us, a necessary refreshment after the harried and sometimes impatient period that is Advent. If you are in need of a break and a reminder of what Christmas is really all about, we’d love to see you at 10:30 on December 24.

On Christmas Day we will celebrate with an informal Eucharist with carols. A lovely, quiet way to start the Christmas season officially, it serves, for many, as a touchstone in the midst of Christmas Day busy-ness.  Come join us for that bit of joy and celebration on Christmas Day.

The view from Bolton Street

What happens when Christmas Eve is on a Sunday?

This year, as happens every decade or so, Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday, which means it is the fourth Sunday of Advent. Why, you ask? Because according to the Church calendar the Feast of Christmas is celebrated on December 25. It has been customary, of course, in many Episcopal and Anglican churches around the world to celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve — often with a Midnight Mass that rings in the Feast of Christmas with candles, bells, carols and a lot of Christmas joy.

The question that might be on your mind is “Do I HAVE to come to church on Sunday morning AND Sunday evening?”

Now, you should know by now that in the Episcopal Church there is very little you HAVE to do, and even less that I or any other authority can MAKE you do!  As people of faith, we worship God both communally and individually, and you have to make the best decision for you.  

But let me say that it might be a good idea to approach Christmas with a different lens this year than most.  Plan to be here at 8 or 10:30 a.m. on Sunday for the Advent IV liturgy.  Spend some time pondering, for a few more hours, the waiting and wanting and hoping for the return of the Savior.  Put behind you the lights and the present buying and the office parties and everything else. It will be a slow day, and the day after it even slower, so languish a bit in the slowness of life with us on Sunday morning.  

Join in the festivities after services as we green the church. Find yourself a cup of chili or hot cocoa and help string greens and decorate Christmas trees and prepare this place for the coming of the baby Jesus.  

And then come back in the evening — maybe for the 5 pm pageant service, with a rather industrious bunch of children singers. Or for the 10:30 Midnight Mass to bask in the organ, the incense, the music, the candles and perhaps some memories of Christmases past and some hope for Christmases present and future as you invite the child Christ back into your heart and into your life. Or do something totally different this year. Come back and join us as we gather around the font for an informal service on Christmas Day with your favorite Christmas carols (picked by you) and maybe some more hot cocoa, coffee and leftover Christmas cookies. 

However you choose to celebrate Christmas this year, I am grateful to have you as part of the Memorial family, and I hope that this Christmas season offers you an opportunity to invite Jesus back into your life, and rekindle a passion for living out the Gospels all the time: tending the sick, giving rest to the weary, soothing the suffering and shielding the joyous, all for Jesus’ sake.

Make your 2018 Pledge Online!

Dear friends:

We've all spent time in the past week pondering the people and institutions we are thankful for. Many of you, like us, had Memorial Church on your list of 2017 Thanksgivings: our multiple action-oriented social justice ministries; the impressive rebirth or our Rectory; our constant care for others and for EACH other; our strong and clever and, (we can admit this!) much-cooler-than-the-two-of us young Rector and his family!

Yes, so much to be thankful for. 

But friends, we can take none of it for granted! 

Our current work, and the work of Memorial's future, is made possible only with  your commitment of time, treasure and talent. 

And we're writing today to ask you to consider your commitment of treasure to Memorial's present and future. 

Many of you have made an amazing pledge already to 2018. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!

For those who've not yet pledged, please consider supporting Memorial in 2018 by making an online pledge here.

Should you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact either one us.

Thank you very much in advance for your prayerful consideration of our request.

Sincerely,

Monty and Beth

Walter Montgomery Howard, Junior Warden
monty.howard@gmail.com  

Beth Drummond Casey, Senior Warden
bethdrummondcasey@gmail.com

The View From Bolton Street: Hell

There seems to be a lot of talk of Hell these days, which, for Episcopalians, makes sense. We have just entered Advent, and for three weeks we are reminded about Armageddon, the end of the world, sin, judgment and yes ... Hell. So it might be a good time to address the question “Do we believe in Hell?”

In less complicated times perhaps it is hard to believe in hell. When life is good and our family and friends are happy, are bank accounts are balanced, our personal lives are stable, ‘Hell’ seems like a far-off and strange thing. A scary thing. a needless thing, perhaps. 

But in more troublesome times, Hell seems entirely too plausible.  When it feels like the carpet could be pulled out from under you at any minute, when it feels like your friends might disappear, when all of your safety, all your stability, everything seems impermanent, Hell may seem like your day-to-day reality, or worse a permanent status you might wish on those responsible for the hell you are currently living. 

There is a popular theology in the church that says “God’s judgement requires that Hell exists, but God’s mercy require that it be empty”; or rather that the inescapable conclusion of Scripture and the incarnate God is that some punishment must be levied on us individually and corporately for the evil we have done, but that God is also so good to us that it is unimaginable that any of us would have to suffer for it.  While I am grateful for this theology, I do find it lacking and here is why. 

Let me say a few things about Hell and then perhaps frame this for our common life over the next several weeks. 

First of all, we must dispense with the notion of Hell as a place for “non-believers.” It is too simplistic to think that saying some magic words will save you from eternal damnation. Further, in a world where almost every day self-proclaimed Christians drop bombs from drones flying half a world away killing innocent Muslim children, it is impossible (for this Christian) to believe in a God that would send the pilot to Heaven and condemn the Children to Hell.

Second, we also must reconcile ourselves to the fact that God’s grace does indeed abound and it is quite possible that many terrible people (you can make your own list) have sought and will receive forgiveness from the most high.  If we believe in grace for ourselves, we must believe in it for all.

Third, Hell has always had a physical reality here on earth. From the Valley of Gehenna outside Jerusalem (the trash dump where fires literally burned forever) to the modern-day hells we see in trash dumps outside of Mexico City, or the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, or U.S. detention facilities; to the personal hells of LGBT people continuing to be re-abused; or women who have suffered sexual abuse in the workplace, the home or at Church .. Hell IS real, and no amount of creative theology can take that away. 

You see, whether we believe in Hell or not, does not change the reality that many people around the world live in Hell every day. When John comes in Mark speaking of repentance and forgiveness of sins, he is speaking to a people who are both living in a kind of hell and acutely aware of their own responsibility for the hell they have created.  They want a way out. They desperately want a new way to be. And John is offering them a path towards that new way. 

That new way is found in the birth of a savior, the Boy King Jesus. The risen Christ.

As we approach Christmas, we should be profoundly aware of the promise of Jesus to do away with Hell, and with our own responsibility as Christians to lessen the personal hell our friends and neighbors live with on a daily basis.  That is why I am proud of Memorial’s efforts to call for justice on a local and state level; why I am proud our children have organized a giving tree to collect toys and supplies for children in need; and why I am grateful for the leadership of Bruno our intern in putting together a Christmas party for the needy residents of Linden Park Apartments — because these are powerful examples of how we are spending this Advent season making Jesus seem a little closer, and Hell a little further away, for each other, and for all those suffering this season.

Angel Baskets & Greening the church

IT'S NOT TOO LATE! If you have Angel basket items, please bring them to church on Sunday 12/24.

The congregation contributes small special items for parishioners who are homebound, or in frail health, or who have daunting challenges.  These baskets are SMALL. We ask for small personal care items, all unscented or very mildly scented, such as small wrapped soaps or small hand or body lotions, tea bags in their own envelopes, hot chocolate, hard mints wrapped, small prayer booklets or meditations.  Each basket will include an angel figure or ornament. We hope to have some special items for the younger members as well as older parishioners! We will assemble the baskets after church on Sunday and arrange for delivery as soon as possible. There will be 8 or 9 baskets. 

At the same time, we will be "Greening the church" with the trees and greens procured last weekend at Feldhof Farm. Volunteers are encouraged to bring work gloves to help protect against sap from the trees and keep your hands clean to enjoy some of Paul Seaton's award-winning* chili! The Greening should take no more than an hour after church, and many hands make light work, so please consider sticking around for a bit to help.

If you would like to learn more about this activity or other small ministry possibilities,(including prayer groups) please speak to Fr. Grey or call or email Pam Fleming. 410-366-6827. >guypamsh@gmail.com>

Justice Committee

Upcoming Justice Committee Meeting — Wednesday Dec 13th — 6:30 Eucharist and 7:00 pm meeting as we discussed further steps towards becoming a Racial Reconciling Congregation.  

Please join as you are able for our regular monthly Justice Committee meeting. We will hear updates from the different ongoing initiatives (including Violence Reduction, Education, and Racial Reconciliation) and do some planning on some joint events with St. Michael and All Angels and St Katherine’s in the coming year.  If you would like to take part in these conversations, do plan to join us at 6:30 pm next Wednesday.