EpiphanyBy Bruce MacAlister

It happened to Moses. A burning bush called out to him. It was the revealing of God and God’s calling him to duty; an epiphany. Moses kept having these epiphanies; cloud and fire on escaping Egypt; face-to-face with God on Mount Sinai; the revealing of the ten commandments. Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah; the prophets got their call in a revealing of God to them.

For much of Western Christendom it is the visit of the three Magi (aka, three kings, astrologers from the east) to the manger to see the baby Jesus. It is a revealing of God as seen in Jesus. Epiphany in the Episcopal church starts January 6th and is a season (Epiphanytide) that lasts until February 13th. Ash Wednesday is February 14th and thus starts Lent.

That font of much knowledge, Wikipedia, describes the season thusly:

“Popular Epiphany customs include Epiphany singing, chalking the door, having one’s house blessed, consuming Three Kings Cake, winter swimming, as well as attending church services. It is customary for Christians in many localities to remove their Christmas decorations on Epiphany Eve (Twelfth Night), although those in other Christian countries historically remove them on Candlemas, the conclusion of Epiphanytide. According to the first tradition, those who fail to remember to remove their Christmas decorations on Epiphany Eve must leave them untouched until Candlemas, the second opportunity to remove them; failure to observe this custom is considered inauspicious.”

Artist: Pieter Brueghel the Youmger, 1904

• Raymond Glover has died

• CARITAS 2017

• A Message from Hilary+

• Wednesday Services and Epiphanies

• Maneuvering through weeds and monuments

• Become a “Witness at the Capitol”

• VICPP informational conference call

• Join the mighty recycling team

• Contribute packing materials for reuse

• Community Meals are changing the day

• January Book Club

• Food Pantry Meeting and Training

• Veterans’ Shelter dinners January 25

• Side By Side Meal

• Health Brigade Christmas donations

• December 2017 Vestry Highlights

• Baby - Child area

• Men at the Movies

• New Nursery Staff

• Pageant Pictures

• The Back Page

News of The Church of the Holy Comforterin the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia

Richmond, January 2018

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Raymond Glover, Hymnal editor, has diedFrom the Episcopal News Service, abridged

Church musician Raymond Glover, 89, who influenced millions of Episcopalians by being the general editor of The Hymnal 1982, died Dec. 15 in Alexandria, Virginia.

[Ray and his wife Joyce attended Holy Comforter for several years. He held occasional forums where he demonstrated the art of creating church music with parishioners participating as his choir. He was a powerful teacher. Editor.]

Glover was born in Buffalo, New York, and began his musical life as a young chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral there. Later, he sang in the choir at St. Mary Magdalen, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, studying composition with Healy Willan, who became his mentor and friend. His next move was to Union Theological Seminary to earn a Masters of Sacred Music. He returned to Buffalo as cathedral organist and choirmaster and met Joyce MacDonald (1923-2013), who was director of Christian education. They were married on Easter Monday 1957 and remained partners in so many ways throughout their life together.

The 1960s were a time of great change, and Glover played his role in musical response to liturgical reform as a member of what was then known as the Episcopal Church’s Standing

Commission on Church Music. During this decade, he taught at Berkeley Divinity School and found time while on the Yale campus to study organ with the university’s organist, Charles Krigbaum. Then in 1966, Glover joined Jim Litton and Gerre Hancock to found the Association of Anglican Musicians (AAM) and served as president from 1969-70.

Jack Spong, who was then rector of St. Paul’s in Richmond, Virginia, and later became bishop of the Diocese of Newark, called Glover to become director of music.

The Hymnal 1982 was dedicated at Washington National Cathedral in 1985, and Glover went on to edit a four-volume companion. In 1986, he was granted an honorary doctorate from Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS), where he later joined the faculty as professor of music and organist (1991-2000). With Marilyn Keiser and Carol Doran he was instrumental in the development of the Program for Musicians Serving in Small Congregations. Following his retirement, Glover continued to teach and develop new courses in collaboration with VTS colleagues.

CARITAS 2017By the Rev Joe Klenzmann, Deacon

In our usual Holy Comforter tradition, we spent the week before Christmas caring for 32 homeless women. CARITAS 2017 by the numbers:

• Total number of times people volunteered was 96 (but we think a few didn’t put down their names).• Total number of “Recorded Hours” was 333 (but we know some forgot to enter their hours so it’s probably over 400 hours).• Our teams made over 220 lunches and meals.• Our guests drank 6 gallons of orange juice, 4 gallons of milk, 30 pots of coffee, and 10 pots of hot water.• 300 breakfast pastries• 10 bags of oranges, 6 bags of pears, and 10 bunches of bananas• And 7 nights of our love and care

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A Message from Hilary+Dear Friends and Companions in

Ministry,

As we begin a new year, I wish you joy in all that you do in 2018. Of course, not everything gives us joy, but what we do at church, and through the church, ought to at least give us energy and satisfaction and sometimes joy as we sense God calling us to action. Please talk with me if you are wondering what your focus might be for

this year as a member or a friend of Holy Comforter.

Perhaps God is calling you to leadership on the vestry. Each year our church elects three new vestry members to serve a three-year term. This year we will also elect someone to fulfill the term of a member

who had to step down because of health reasons; one year remains in that term. We will hold our election on Sunday February 4th during our Annual Parish Meeting, which will be followed by lunch provided by the church so that we can celebrate our life together with a meal. We have much to celebrate!

While all church members can be leaders and have an important role, vestry members are responsible for the business of the church and the overall leadership of the parish. After reading the information below, if you are interested in learning more, please contact me so that we can find a time to talk. If you know of someone who may be right for this ministry, please talk with that person and encourage him or her to contact me.

Good discernment requires knowing what is expected so that one can consider prayerfully if he or she is called to a particular ministry. Vestry members are expected to:

• attend church regularly (weekly with the occasion absence)• attend an annual vestry retreat, usually held in August

• attend a monthly vestry meeting, normally on the 1st Monday of the month, 6:30pm to 8:30pm• support the programs of the church by attending church events and activities• serve as a liaison to a ministry (such as Outreach, Pastoral Care….)• serve as Vestry Person of the Day on Sundays once every nine weeks (assist our clergy on Sunday mornings as needed, make the welcome announcement, secure buildings after Sunday worship)• support the church financially by tithing (giving 10% of one’s income as an offering to God) or working toward the tithe as one is able. Vestry members must turn in a pledge card annually.• be a team player, a good listener, and be willing to support vestry decisions even when one is not in total agreement.

In order to stand for election, one must be a confirmed Episcopalian of at least 16 years of age (or have been received into the Episcopal Church by a bishop) and member of Holy Comforter, be regular in attendance and known to the Treasurer. I hope that you will consider prayerfully if God is calling you to this ministry or another as we enter 2018.

Blessings for the New Year,

Hilary+

Wednesday Services and EpiphaniesBy Hilary Smith, Rector

Join us on Wednesdays at 12:15pm starting January 10th for contemplative services that engage our imaginations around the concept and experience of Epiphany. In the Bible, we find many stories of people coming to know God or something of God at unexpected times in expected ways. These services of the Holy Eucharist will allow time for meditation, reflection, on ways that God is known to you. Join us on January 10th, 17th, 24th, 31st, and February 7th. We meet in the church.

Photography - David Smith-Soto

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Maneuvering through the weeds and monumentsBy Richard Rose

A weedy patch of ninebark, blueberries, wildflowers and towering milkweed mars the lawn in front of the Church of the Holy Comforter on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Why doesn’t someone rout that disorderly tangle? Maybe because it is the wild reminding us who was first.

Long before institutions proudly listed ecological footprint on the Prospectus, I recall another church in the small town where I went to college 53 years ago. The church Bulletin celebrated its newly expanded parking lot and its now “uninterrupted property line.” Earnest as I was at the time, it bothered me that the mission to “go into all the world” had ended at the church property line

Since then, I have had to work on myself to become less earnest—mostly through a kind of mental manipulation to open locked doors like “property” and “wild.” The maneuver is called “frame-shifting” and I have been writing about it for some time, most recently in Tales Since the Shift, a sequel to Frameshifts.

Uninterrupted property lines are invariably interrupted at some scale. The brick wall invariably has hairline cracks. The firewall has workarounds. The gated community always has unwanted visitors. (In New Mexico, they were coyotes.) The most invincible opinion has provisions, conditions, and assumptions. Keeping the Included inside and the Excluded outside is a life-work, if you really want it. I prefer to interrupt myself—particularly if I seem to be on a winning streak. Anytime the world suits me, I become suspicious.

Self-delusions always begin this way. Do a frame-shift right away or you may find yourself like Cyril Radcliffe, forced to draw an uninterrupted line across millions of hearts. What sort of frameshift could he have made? I don’t know. Certainly, he was being forced to decide. Perhaps he

could have considered it from a more inclusive frame of reference. Listening to others, delaying, backing away from premature deadlines, putting the welfare of the many before prestige and need to save face—who knows what kind of decision might have led to less bloodshed in Pakistan after August 14, 1947. Clearly, the Radcliffe approach was to accept and follow the sequence he was given, a sequence based on one side’s attempt to make a world that suits it. Self-delusions always begin this way.

The inexorable sequences of substance abuse, addiction to power, invincible opinions, and violence retain their power by seeming to protect, enclose, and comfort us. The code for such sequences seems to be written into our bones. It so suits us not to interrupt it. It is “inexorable” because it seems beyond our ability to beseech or persuade anyone to change. That is, prayer is useless.

A useful frame-shifting maneuver is to pray without ceasing.

And by “praying” I mean “sustained attention and creative engagement, personal and collaborative, leading to a cognitive procession from fatalism to willful action, ignorance to understanding, grasping to acceptance, waste to salvage, fear to hope, opportunism to compassion, exclusion to inclusion, and partial work to whole-hearted soul-work.”

I have found that closed doors and ideas may give way to this maneuver, whether the openings are needed between people or within ourselves.

Holy Comforter rain garden - Photo George Collier

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Become a “Witness at the Capitol”By Bruce MacAlister

Voters carrying their message to elected legislators is very powerful. The Virginia legislature is in session from mid-January to mid-March. The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) sends in volunteers like you and me to carry the priorities of the faith communities to the delegates and senators. Should you accept this mission, you meet with fellow missionaries-witnesses-lobbyists at a downtown church to get training and then to go out on your missions. Those missions include:

• Attending committee meetings to report on what’s happening• Meeting with legislators and their staffs• Tell the legislators of the faith communities’ positions on legislation• Draft background articles to engage members on issues• Testify on behalf of issues the VICPP is supporting• Post Facebook and Twitter notes about the issues

Want to learn more? Go to the VICPP website. Interested in serving? Send a note to Kim@virginiainterfaithcenter.org.

VICPP informational conference callBy Neill Caldwell, Virginia Interfaith

Center for Public Policy

The 2018 General Assembly session in Richmond begins on January 10. We’ve scheduled an informational conference call to enable you to learn more about the coming session and the Center’s legislative goals and strategies. You will also hear about VICPP’s “Witness at the Capitol”

program and other ways to volunteer and advocate during the General Assembly.

There will actually be two opportunities, the first on Monday evening, Jan. 8 at 7 p.m., and the second on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at noon. Join whichever call is more convenient to your schedule.

We’re setting these up as Zoom meetings. [For the information you’ll need to get connected contact Bruce MacAlister who can give you the Internet or phone connections needed.]

Join the mighty recycling teamBy Kipley Herr

The small but mighty recycling team can use your help. We collect the

recycling from the parish hall and church every other week and place the bins at the curb. You will work with a partner and be on the Rota about every 6 weeks. Easy! Please contact me for details and to join the effort. My contact information

is in the church directory.

Contribute your packing materials for reuseBy Peggy Hombs

For many years, Steven and I have taken pretty much all the packing materials we receive, whether recyclable or not, to Carytown Pack and Ship for them to use in packing boxes for their business. This reuses the materials and allows a small business to save money by not buying shipping materials. They are located in that small strip at the south end of the Ellwood-Thompson parking lot.

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Community Meals are changing the dayBy Patty Galdun

We’re moving our monthly Community Meal to the first Tuesday of every month for 2018. Every month a hearty, homemade soup is provided by some of our congregation’s excellent cooks. The meals are served from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm and take out is available. The soups are usually protein packed and offered with bread and dessert. During the summer months we also have salads. While this ministry was formed to open our building to the surrounding community, we mostly serve our Food Pantry visitors. Those who don’t have access to kitchen facilities appreciate a home-cooked meal. Sometimes we will see people who use our building for one of our many 12 step meetings. Anyone in the congregation is welcome to attend. Not only will you get a home

cooked meal but you will enjoy fellowship with some interesting people. We promise that you only have to come and enjoy as we will not put you to work (although, we do occasionally have to get Kipley from her Food Pantry duty to help with the dishwasher). Our dates for the coming year are: Jan. 2, Feb. 6, Mar. 6, Apr. 3, May 8, June 5, July 3, Aug. 7, Sept. 4, Oct. 2, Nov. 6, and our Annual Holiday Meal will be Dec. 4. Please plan to come to at least one of these meals in the New Year.

January Book ClubBy Stephanie Roberts-Turner

In January our Book Club will be reading The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne. We will be meeting to discuss the book on January 9, 2018 at 6:30 in the parlor. It was selected as one of New York Times Readers’ Favorite Books of 2017:

“From the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy In the Striped Pajamas, a sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man’s life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland. Cyril Avery is not a real Avery – or at least, that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

“Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from - and over his many years, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.

“In this, Boyne’s most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.”

I’m hoping to see you there.

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Food Pantry Ministry Meeting and Training Session January 14

By Phoebe Winter

The Food Pantry Ministry will meet after the service on Sunday, January 14. The pantry has gone through many changes in the past year – redesign, addition of Kroger as a donor, and a new check-in system. The first part of the meeting will be to discuss suggestions for further improving HoCo’s pantry ministry. Everyone is welcome to join us to contribute their ideas and learn more about this ministry.

The second part of the meeting will be training on using our new online check-in system. All volunteers who check in our visitors should attend if possible. If you can bring a laptop to the training, please do so that you can follow along online. As part of the training, you will check in a sample visitor.

See me at church, call me, or send an e-mail note if you have any questions.

Veterans’ Shelter dinners restart January 25By Bruce MacAlister

Our November date was Thanksgiving. Our December date was just after Christmas. So the

Holy Comforter dinner crew doesn’t even attempt to serve those months. The fourth Thursday in January we restart preparing dinner (5pm) and traveling to the shelter (6pm) where we serve and eat with the vets. Being vets they are a worldly bunch and fun to have dinner with. Tell you boss you have to leave a little early for a worthy cause and joins us at 5pm or 6pm for a satisfying service to the temporarily-homeless vets.

Side By Side MealBy Patty Galdun

Every week from Monday through Thursday, Side by Side offers support groups to the young people in our community who are LGBTQ+. These groups provide counseling services to help young people, from ages 11 to 20, learn how to build “strategies for healthy growth and social development,” “communication skills,” and “a unique opportunity to acquire leadership skills.” During their time together they are provided a meal prepared by members of a congregation or group in our community. Holy Comforter’s day is the fourth Thursday of every month; and after a holiday hiatus, we will be serving again this month on January 25th. If you are interested in helping, please join us in the HoCo kitchen at 4 pm.

Health Brigade Christmas donations generous

“We collected $1024.25 for Health Brigade,” reported Assistant Treasurer Helen Reese. The funds come from parishioners and visitors giving during the Christmas services. The medical charity formerly known as the Fan Free Clinic helps the under-insured and the uninsured with comprehensive health care.

Reported by Bruce MacAlister from e-mail notices.

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Highlights of the December 2017 Vestry MeetingBy Ron Cox, Member of the Vestry

BudgetAt the time of the Vestry meeting, 79 pledges

had been received, of which 5 were new. More pledges are expected to be received. The Vestry approved a budget of $310,683 for 2018, compared to $301,205 for 2017. We expect to finish 2017 in the black, with a surplus in the neighborhood of $20,000. The surplus may be used in 2018 to address unbudgeted needs, such as property issues, as the Vestry sees fit.

Grant Mansfield - Ordination as a DeaconAs Grant’s home church, we were asked to

provide a Vestry Letter of Support for Grant’s ordination as a deacon. A motion to provide the letter passed unanimously and the Vestry members signed the letter.

Property ConsultantThe trial period of using a consultant to

assist in the management of property issues has been going well. Things are getting done, and getting done sooner. Examples include the

power washing of walkways, the replacement of the light above the organ and the child-friendly pew reconfiguration.

OtherThe Photo Directory has been a big success.

We look forward to receiving the new directory in the near future. It is possible that we will get an intern, at no cost, through the Young Priest Initiative. We hope this will come to fruition.

Baby-Toddler-Young-Child areaBy Hilary Smith

I call it a Baby-Toddler-Young-Child area. The idea came from my former parish; St. Paul’s On-the-Hill created such a space after I left and I saw it when I went back to visit. The work was organized by Beth Trader who is our property

consultant. In this case, her company did the work, Trader Enterprises of Virginia. The work was paid for by a gift to the Children and Youth ministry and from the Evangelism reserve fund. Two men spent 30 hours working on it; labor and supplies cost $1,418.96. The quality of the work and the materials can be seen in the final result. I thought this would be a great way to show our support for families with young children, and we can see from our Facebook response that many value what we have done. For $10 we boosted the post on our church Facebook page which resulted in 2,113 people being reached and of that number 349 clicked on the post, spend time viewing the picture and information. From my personal Facebook page, we had 133 likes, 18 positive comments and 14 people shared the

post. I mention this because this level of attention through social media is much higher than with anything else I have ever posted. Our families in the church have been telling me how thankful they are for the space and that it means a lot to them that we had created the space for them and their children.

Photo by George Collier

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Men at the MoviesBy Steve Van Voorhees

To begin the New Year, Men at the Movie participants are currently voting on funny movie choices. The top voter-getter will be announced in the weekly e-Messengers and Sunday bulletins by January 14th. The winning movie will be shown at the first regularly scheduled Men at the Movies night on Tuesday, January 23rd. We will gather at 6:00pm for fellowship and begin our viewing at 6:30pm in the newly refurbished parlor on the big, new TV.

Here is the list we’re considering:1. Strange Brew2. This Is the End3. Animal House4. Airplane5. Shaun of the Dead6. Juno7. Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?8. Trainwreck9. Obvious Child10. Silver Linings Playbook11. Burn After Reading12. Sideways13. Enough Said14. In a World15. Bullets Over Broadway

Bring your dinner or munchies, beverages, and your friends for an evening of fellowship and

laughter in the dead of winter. Ice and popcorn will be provided.

Did you know that laughter warms you

up, changes attitudes for the better, heals unseen wounds, and brightens your outlook for the future?

New Nursery Staff

Olivia Begley and Brooke Hahne are our nursery staff from 9:00 am to 11:30am. During the 9am hour they are providing nursery and child care for those parents who sing in the choir or attend adult education.

Photos by George Collier

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Pageant Pictures by Tyler Nichols

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Church of the Holy Comforter, Richmonda parish in the Diocese of Virginia under the Episcopal Church in the USA

which is part of the worldwide Anglican CommunionMonument Avenue at Staples Mill Road

web - www.hoco.org; e-mail - office@hoco.org; phone 804-355-3251; fax 804-355-0049

• Sundays, 8:45am, Adult Formation, Hayward Parlor • Sundays, 10am, Choral Eucharist• Sundays, about 10:15am, Children’s Chapel, starts in the Church, moves to Parish House Children’s Chapel• Second Sundays, 4:30pm, Story Time

Food Pantry Hours:• First and third Saturdays, 11:00am to noon • First and third Tuesdays, 5:30 to 6:30pm

Side By Side & Vet Shelter Meal Preparation• Fourth Thursdays, 4pm Side by Side, 5pm Vet Shelter

Editing of the Messenger is done by Bruce MacAlister, the layout by George Collier.The February Messenger will be available Sunday, February 4th, 2018. The deadline for that edition is

Friday, January 26th, 2018 (but earlier submission is encouraged).

Please send your submissions to editor@hoco.orgA full color (and much more attractive) version of the Messenger is available on our web site -

www.hoco.org

Coming Events at the Church of the Holy ComforterSee the Hoco web site calendar page for detailed calendar and rota

Hoco Birthdays for the month of January: Andrew Kunz, 1st; Marion Wells, 2nd; Brenley Doran, 10th; Bonnie Steffey, 20th; Ed Deane, 22nd;

David Lehman, 22nd; D. Craig Anderson, 26th; Hilary Raymond, 28th