Sheng Zhen Gong Practice Schedule

Welcome to the new decade, and its promise of many opportunities for growth and change. We invite you to try some Sheng Zhen practice and see where it takes you. 

Our class schedules for January and February have a big gap in them because I will be going to the Philippines for a Teacher Training with Master Li from January 26 to February 14. Yes, I am very excited!

Before then, there are 7 chances to practice Sheng Zhen in the neighborhood: 

• Join us TONIGHT, Jan. 2 from 5:30-6:30 at Memorial Episcopal Church, 1407 Bolton St. in the upper parish hall.

• We'll also have class on Thursdays 1/9, 16, & 23 at same place and time.

• And at the Y at Druid Hill, 1609 Druid Hill Ave, we will have class on Tuesdays 1/7, 14 & 21 from 5:30-6:300. These classes are free for Y members, and cost $10 for a drop-in, non-member.  

• Classes will resume on Tuesday 2/18 at the Y, and Thursday 2/20 at Memorial Church, and continue on the same schedule every Tuesday & Thursday for the spring season. 

We hope you will be able to join us, and may the new year bring you all good things.

Justice Committee Shout-out

Come, visit the Justice Committee on Wednesday, January 8th at 6:30 p.m.

What moves you to act? Is it voting, education, incarceration, the environment or eviction or do you have a special initiative calling you to act? As a Church we are called to move toward Justice. Please join us and become part of the movement as we do Christ's work towards bringing Justice to our Baltimore through advocacy and action. 

There are barriers keeping the poor in a never ending cycle and forcing our neighbors to live in a reactionary world where what is going to happen next is a never ending trap. Help us remove those barriers and lift up our fellow people, we need your expertise and experience.

The View from Bolton Street - A New Year!

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the Israelites: You shall say to them,

The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them

Numbers 6:22-27

Thank you for being a Blessing. Yes you!

You are a blessing to us. If you are reading this, you have been a blessing to Memorial this year. Even if you haven’t darkened our doorsteps in many years, even if you only came to see a musical, or a concert, or for a community meeting. Even if you are not sure “Church” is really a place for you, you have been a blessing to us. 

Because at some point this Jesus-centered, justice-focused community came across your mind and made you smile, or think, or ponder, or offer a prayer, and so you have blessed us in 2019, and this serves as a note of thanks to you for keeping Memorial in your heart, your mind and your prayers. 

Of course many of you reading this have been a consistent blessing! Whether you have kept the altar appropriately beautiful, led processions as an acolyte or crucifer, volunteered with our justice committee, collected toys or food or clothes for those in need, sung in the choir, helped lead worship, or served on one of many committees that keep this place running, you have certainly been a blessing to this place. 

So it seems appropriate to end the year (and start the next) with the priestly blessing from numbers. Conferred to Moses by The Almighty to bless the priests as the Israelites wandered through the desert, it is both a reminder of the Lord’s never-failing love for us and our inextricable connection to the Jewish people. Our Jewish siblings are important to us. They matter to us. And as our Jewish neighbors up the street and around the world suffer from yet another anti-semitic attack, we remember that we too suffer. Just as We share our blessings, so do we share in our hurts, and support each other in times of need.

This year Memorial has experienced its share of losses. We have said goodbye to parents, grandparents, siblings, and long-time friends and members of this community; and I have watched as you have supported each other with kind words and casseroles, with visits and with prayer, with tears and with laughter. 

You all have been a blessing to each other. You have made God’s light shine upon friend and stranger alike in their darkest moments, and brought peace to unlikely places. 

Thank you for being a blessing. I hope you will consider making a gift at the end of the year to honor the blessing that is Memorial, and the blessing we can be to each other. 

Happy new year!

Upcoming Liturgy and Living Program

January 12 — ‘Homelessness in Baltimore’ with Dr. Gregory Branch, Project Plase

Gregory William Branch, MD, MBA, CPE, is Health Officer and Director of the Baltimore County Department of Health and Human Services. A native of New York City, he graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and completed his training at Johns Hopkins Hospital in the Internal Medicine Residency Program. He also earned an MBA degree from the University of Baltimore Merrick School of Business. Dr. Branch has has held multiple executive positions, including as Lead Physician and Medical Director of Laboratory Services at the Johns Hopkins Medical Services Corporation; Chief Medical Officer of Gerald Family Care in Washington, DC; Medical Director at Baltimore Medical System, and Chief Medical Officer for Maryland Physicians Care (Medicaid) and the Maryland Health Insurance Program. Dr. Branch is a Board Certified Internist, and is also on the Faculty of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Nursing. He's a nationally recognized Certified Physician Executive, and was a recipient of the Maryland Daily Records’ 2008 Health Care Hero Award. In addition to his academic and professional achievements, he participates in multiple community activities, including as Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Unified Voices of Johns Hopkins (a community Gospel Choir), and as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors for Project P.L.A.S.E. (People Lacking Ample Shelter and Employment). Dr. Branch is a member of Huber Memorial Church, on Loch Raven Blvd., where the Reverend P.M. Smith is Pastor. He has two sons, Byron Martin and Allen Bernard.

January 19th — “Repair and Restore: Uncovering the Racist Past of our Church” - The Rev. Natalie Conway and the Rev. Grey Maggiano

In preparation for their presentation to the National Church in Atlanta, Grey and Natalie will be giving a preview of their presentation on Memorial’s story, Natalie’s story, and the Church’s story of repentance, atonement and reconciliation.

2019 Christmas Message From Memorial Episcopal Church

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid” Matthew 1:20

A parish Christmas message usually follows one of two patterns: 1) remember how great the year was? Well so do we. Now please contribute to our year end campaign. Or 2) Thanks for coming to church today. Why don’t you try it all next year!  

There is nothing wrong with this of course. You can consult my previous Christmas letters for great examples of these messages! By all means DO make a generous end of year gift so we can go into 2020 on a positive note and please DO come back next year.  Even if this is your first time here this place is not the same without you. 

But this year I have a sense a different kind of message is in order.  It is a tense time. A scary time. And a worrying time. It doesn’t serve anyone, least of all Jesus, to pretend that locally and nationally the world feels quite a mess. Fear is a constant refrain no matter your politics or your location.

Is there room for joy, hope, and expectation in your heart this Christmas Season? 

Remember these words from the Angel Gabriel: “Joseph, Son of David, Be Not Afraid.” This was not just a generic message of inspiration though. Joseph was being sent on a mission.  He was about to alienate his family, friends and King Herod. He was going to take Mary and Jesus across a foreign border and help hide his newborn Son from a vengeful, fearful King. He was rebelling - not against an unjust ruler or a corrupt political system but against a world that said “its always going to be like this.” 

It is tempting today to want to rebel against corrupt leaders locally or nationally. To take the other side and fight the enemy. But just as it was in Jesus time so it is in our time, the struggle is not against each other, but against the cosmic powers of this darkness and the spiritual forces of wickedness. It was against those forces that the angel sent Joseph out. 

You are Joseph. You are a son of David. The Incarnate God Goes with you. 

It is against those forces that God sends us out this Christmas. 

We are Children of God. We are sons and daughters of the Holy Family. The Incarnate God walks with us. 

The only way to defeat cosmic powers of darkness is with joy and light. The only way to confront spiritual forces of wickedness is with love and hope. It is my hope that we will take this message into 2020 and out into the world; and we will confront the hate we see with joy, the fear we feel with hope, and the pain we encounter with love.  And that you and others will be drawn in to this place so that they too can take joy, light, love and hope out into the world.    

This season there IS room for joy, hope and expectation, because we are making that room here at Memorial; and I am grateful to walk with the incarnate God and with all of you in these days.

Merry Christmas! 

The Rev. Grey Maggiano, Rector 

The View from Bolton Street

“One day more...”

The big day is almost here. The moment we have all been expecting. The episode that has captured all of your attention these last few weeks, maybe months.  The center of everything. the ‘still point of the turning world’ to echo T.S. Eliot. 

I’m of course talking about the last shopping day before Christmas.  Or maybe for you it is the last day of school. Or the Star Wars premiere? I’m probably on firm ground, however, saying that midnight mass on Christmas Eve is not that moment for you.  

This is, of course good and not good. Christmas is a different kind of Christian observance than Easter, and one that has been celebrated very differently throughout the ages, and has always been, to some extent or another, an amalgamation of cultural and religious practices blended together. So the mixing of cultural and secular practices and religious and Christian practices around Christmas makes some sense. And some of those secular traditions are good! Collecting food for those in need, purchasing presents for disadvantaged kids, holiday parties with lots of spirit (and sometimes spirits), Christmas caroling, light displays, these are all beautiful ways for community to share and be together, and a helpful reminder that the Holidays are not just about consumerism and what I want. 

But there is of course a shadow side as well. If we only focus on the secular, communal, cultural aspects of Christmas, we miss the opportunity to experience what the birth of a savior can mean. If we don’t place worship at the center, whether its at 5 pm with a pageant, 10:30 pm with smells and bells and choir and candlelight, or 10:30 am on Christmas Day with carols and joy,  we forego the chance to see salvation in action.  To invite the savior into our own lives.  

We forget, of course, but the reason the Shepherds and the wise men and the sheep and the cows and the pigs and donkeys and giraffes (my children are certain there was a giraffe at the birth of our savior) were present was to worship the incarnate God.  To bow down and pay homage to this boy King, to a child savior who came to make the whole world new. 

So his Christmas ask yourself if you could use a little salvation? A little hope? And if the world could use a little salvation too. 

And if the answer is yes, mark your calendar now for Christmas worship. Here or wherever you might be.  Make Jesus the still point of your turning world, and salvation the hope we find in this season. 

Christmas Service Schedule

This Christmas Season, you are invited to join us at Memorial to Celebrate the Birth of our Savior. Memorial is an open, inclusive and affirming community and we hope to see you this season.

We have two services Christmas Eve (5:00 and 10:30 pm) and a Christmas Day Service at 10:30 am.

In addition, on December 22nd at 6:30 pm we will have a ‘Blue Mass’ to assist those who are grieving or otherwise blue this Holiday Season in processing their losses and finding a path towards peace and joy this Christmas Season. This is open to all people of faith, and we hope you find rest here if that is what your heart needs this season.

The View from Bolton St.

This week, Memorial hosted our fourth Vigil for Trans Lives in conjunction with the Maryland Institute Queer Alliance (MIQA). Every fall, students from MICA take time out of their busy semester schedules to gather and remember members of the Trans community that have died by violence in the last year. We gather, we pray, light candles, read names and stories, and remember. It is a remarkably religious event for a group of students and a campus that is famously almost proudly non-religious.

For me it is a sacred honor to gather with a group of Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer and Gender Non-Conforming students as they seek to remember the dead and to ask for a better life for them in the world to come. A holy moment that always comes at a busy time but that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Every year we have a guest speaker. I try and use this as an opportunity to disrupt our ideas of what ‘trans’ means - we have had military veterans and seminarians, and this year we had Brother Merrick Moses, who is a member of Holy Nativity and a Brother in the Independent Catholic Church, who spoke about the importance of remembering not the deaths, but the lives of the people we have lost. That it is only in remembering them as fully human that we can ever get to a world where we no longer kill people because of who they are or who they love. A world where we all are just ‘human’.

Now you may be asking, where does The Church stand on trans lives? For many Christians and Christian traditions this is a challenging, and complicated question. Perhaps it is a question you yourself have struggled with. Perhaps you yourself are wondering what ‘trans’ means?

To be trans, or transgender means that your Gender Identity differs from your biological sex. That is you may have been born biologically male or female in terms of your physical body, but you understand yourself to be the opposite or neither. Medically this is called Gender Dysphoria, and is a diagnosable medical condition where one experiences stress when their physical body does not match their mental understanding of themselves.

While not all Religious traditions understand this theologically the same way, even some of the most conservative traditions begin the appropriate response with compassion. Andrew Walker is a prominent Southern Baptist author and in his book “God and the Transgender Debate” he reminds all of us that when a Trans person reveals themselves to their parents and family “These few seconds are perhaps some of the most consequential of your child’s life. And Yours...A child who rejects your faith...will never cease to be your child.” Even extreme conservative Christians would agree that the first response should be one of compassion, understanding and support.

There are of course, also many Trans Christians, including clergy, crating a much more positive outlook on the Church and Trans people. In his book TRANSforming Austen Harke writes “There are two ways to interpret what Paul says in Galatians 3:28 about our being one in Christ: either it means that we are all whitewashed and homogenized and our differences are erased... or it means that we are called to find a way to make our different identities fit together, like the bright shards in assorted colors that make up the stained glass windows of a cathedral. Are we called to sameness, or are we called to oneness?”

In the Episcopal Tradition, we are canonically much more accepting of Trans people, in that we do not put any limitations on their participation in the life of the Church and we understand them to be, like all the rest of us, ‘Made on the image and with the likeness of God.’ Trans people can and do serve on the altar, as clergy, on vestries and in Diocesan leadership. But as Episcopalian and Duke Divinity Student Vivian Taylor frequently points out, the numbers don’t lie. Representation in churches and in leadership is very small. Partly because the Trans community itself is very small, and partly because we as Christians still don’t quite know how to respond. For example, it is still common for people to confuse ‘Drag Queens’ (who are performance artists that may or may not identify as Transgender) with trans people, or to use derogatory terms like ‘tranny’ to refer to them.

This year we remember 27 trans people who died by violence in the United States. Almost all of them are black trans women. Two were trans women who died in detention by Homeland Security/ICE. It is an extremely small, extremely vulnerable population whose life expectancy is a fraction of what it should be. I am not asking everyone who reads this to agree on whether we are born male or female, if gender is fluid, if gender dysphoria is real, or at what age or who gets to make these kinds of decisions - I expect even in a community like Memorial there are a wide range of feelings and emotions on this issue, and one brief reflection won’t move the needle much.

But I do hope you will take a moment to consider what you will do when someone you care about comes to you with a very scary, very sacred, very fragile secret about their own identity. Will you look at them like an oddity? A side-show? Or as a beloved Child of God. Made in God’s image, with God’s likeness, with all the possibility the divine has given them and the promise to fulfill it. I pray it is the latter, and that you will honor that sacred trust that has been given to you, and share it back with them.

I can’t answer all the questions about God and Trans lives and salvation. But I do know that God has crafted us in God’s image, and Jesus desperately seeks to draw us closer to God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And our role as Christians is to make that path for others as smooth as possible so they can see God’s love in this place so that one day they may experience it every place. Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humankind in his image,    in the image of God he created them.

The View from Bolton St.

Gratitude 

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by God’s word and by prayer.

1 Timothy 4:4-5

It is always good to be thankful, but this is a particularly good time of year to express gratitude, so let me start.

I am grateful for the paid and volunteer staff of Memorial Church. Not many churches have the kind of dedicated volunteers, Like Becky Clark, Paul Seaton, John Seeley, Bill Roberts, and Pam Fleming who are here more often than most of the paid staff (Sometimes the Rector!) and make this place run.  

I am grateful for our clergy - for Natalie, Jill, Ken and Bradley, and for our clergy in training Carolyn who make Sunday Mornings more fun. 

I am grateful for our staff, For Kathy, Justine, Hannah, Pierre, Nirina, Valerie, and Barry who work hard to keep an old building going, the programs printed, the budget on track, and kids learning and growing, coffee hour flowing and your Rector from not falling apart. 

And I am grateful for all of our volunteers - the vestry, choir, altar guild, acolytes, welcomers, greeters, vergers, flower guild, Lectors, Eucharistic ministers, committee chairs, Samaritan Community volunteers, and for each and every one of you who sponsors a child at Christmas, volunteers at a community event, supports your local school, works for justice and equality, or just smiles at strangers on the street. You are part of the ever expanding bounty of Jesus’ love for the world that comes out of Memorial every day.  

Baltimore is a tough city sometimes. It can be hard to be thankful here.  But there are hundreds, thousands of people who work every day to make this city a better place.  From kids who spend their summers working with youth works, to the teachers in our schools, to the countless non profit staff and leaders filling gaps in social services and networks across the city, to doctors and nurses and counselors and city employees who just try and keep lights on, streets clear and people moving around the city. Lisa Snowden, Editor of ‘The Baltimore Beat’ collected a list of ‘People making Baltimore Better’ on Twitter this week (https://twitter.com/lisamccray/status/1199322653229797378?s=21) and it was really inspiring and hopeful to see so many people lifting up friends and colleagues and neighbors who do their little part to make this city a wonderful place to to live, to work, to serve, to worship and to call home. 

I hope that you feel the same way about Memorial.  That it is a place to call home. Whether you live in Ellicott City, Bolton Hill, Dundalk, Lauraville, Patterson Park, Catonsville, Columbia, Upton, TV Hill, Stone Hill, or any other hill you can find — I hope that you are grateful to call Memorial home, and that in this place you find a community that helps you deepen your relationship with Christ, with the Church and with the World. 

I am thankful for this place, and I hope you are too. 

The View from Bolton St.

A Reflection on Christ the King

When Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice

THE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS ARE ON!

for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God’, and since then has been

SONDLAND SAID THERE WAS A QUID PRO QUO!

waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’

CAN YOU BELIEVE WHAT SHE SAID!

For by a single offering he has perfected

HEALTHY HOLLY!

for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

CHIK-FIL-A!

‘This is the covenant that I will make with them

BLACK FRIDAY!

after those days, says the Lord:

BURISMA! UKRAINE!

I will put my laws in their hearts,

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS ALREADY!

and I will write them on their minds’

Hebrews 10:12-16 (Interrupted)

The Feast of Christ the King is celebrated the last Sunday of the Church Year. It is the last Sunday of the season of Pentecost, right before Advent 1 and the turning over of the Church Calendar back to the beginning. In the Western (Protestant and Catholic Churches) the celebration of ‘Christ the King’ is a recent innovation, put forward by Pope Pius XI in 1925. This was done for two reasons, 1) to strengthen the faith of Catholics in a time of rising anti-Catholic sentiment around the world, and 2) to combat rising nationalism around the world, to remind us that for Christians we have no King but Jesus, and the only nation we belong to is the Kingdom of God. It makes the celebration of Christ the King this week particularly poignant because we again are experiencing a rising tide of nationalism around the world, and also because many of us are so distracted by the impeachment proceedings, among many other things, that we scarcely have time for anything else, including even our prayers. Which words have come out of your mouth more this week? Jesus, God, Faith, the Church? Or Burisma, Ukraine, Sondland and Trump?

The challenge of the Christian faith, and our particular Episcopal/Anglican branch of it, is to keep a feet in both worlds. We are not Anabaptists, content to disconnect entirely from the human world around us; and yet we are also not secular do-gooders, with no connection to the divine. We are Children of God, citizens of God’s Kingdom who also have been given stewardship over life here on earth. But it is hard to maintain that balance when life in one world is exciting and life in the other may seem... dull by comparison. Our call is to stay engaged with those issues that matter most in this world, including yes of course impeachment proceedings and criminal investigations into city leadership, but to keep enough distance to remember that our loyalty is to God in heaven an not to any political leadership here. So let us celebrate Christ the King fully this week!

As our national political sphere continues to meltdown, we should celebrate that we have a King who will not fail us, a Lord who do not disappoint and a savior whose love does not depend on what you say at the press conference. We should celebrate a 2000 year tradition of speaking truth to power, and of creating communities that defy the cultural norms and expectations around us. And above all we should celebrate a risen savior who remembers us, forgives us, and restores us - in this life and in the life to come. No matter how many quid pro quos we’ve done.