The Carillon Page 1

Trinity Cathedral

The Carillon for June 2015

The Carillon is the monthly

newsletter of Trinity Episcopal

Cathedral

Sara Calkins, Editor

www.trinitysj.org

Dean’s Desk Page 2

Canon’s Corner Page 3

Opportunities & Outreach Page 4

Music Ministry Page 5

Internet Insights Page 7

Celebrations! Page 8

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Trinity Cathedral Staff

The Very Rev. David Bird, Ph.D. Dean and Rector

Mr. Michael Joyce Music Director

Ms. Heike Merino Cathedral Administrator

Mr. John Davis Sexton

Volunteer Staff

The Rev. Canon Randolf J. Rice, J.D. Canon Residentiary

The Rev. Canon Lance Beizer, J.D. Canon Vicar

The Rev. Jerry W. Drino, D.D. Priest Associate, Sudanese Ministries

The Rev. Lee Barford, Ph.D. Deacon

Mr. Paul Archambeault Treasurer

Graciela Velazquez Coordinator for Latino Ministries

The Rev. Penelope Duckworth, M.F.A. Mr. Stuart Johnson Artists in Residence

Professor Brent Walters Scholar in Residence

John Ortberg, the senior pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, has just written a highly informative reflection on “Leading Amid Ambiguity.” Since this is a situation in which vestries and clergy frequently find themselves I found it both helpful and consoling. Yes we have Scripture, a prayer book and Sacred Tradition (such as the creeds), as well as canons and rules of order, but we are invariably composed of people with very different backgrounds, opinions, financial circum-stances and emotional and spiritual needs. No matter what, areas of our church life will be subject to change, development and disagreement. Thus a fundamental need for the leadership is to define reality. Unfortunately “reality” can often tell us more about ourselves, our hopes, perceptions and fears, than about the way in which the congregation perceives the mission and identity of the church. I quote here from Ortberg’s article: If, as Max DePree says, a leader’s first task is to define reality, then perhaps a lead-er’s first enemy is ambiguity. A pastor I know on the East Coast has been trying to do a turn-around with conflicted church—when he tries to institute changes, he may get wrist-slapped for doing new stuff; when he doesn’t, he’ll get criticized for lack of vision. “I just want to know what the church wants,” he said. “When it comes to music style, or preaching content, or adult ministries infrastructure, or pastoral leadership, I feel like the church isn’t clear about what it wants.”

Here’s the deal: churches don’t want anything. Individuals want things. People want things. Churches are full of individuals who want different things than one another. Sometimes very different things. Sometimes the same individual wants

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The Carillon

June 2015

Trinity

Episcopal Cathedral

“A place at God’s table for everyone”

Diocese of El Camino Reál

The Right Reverend Mary Gray-Reeves, Bishop

Dean’s Desk

Trinity Cathedral Established 1861

81 N 2nd Street, San Jose CA 95113-1205

24-hour phone 408 293-7953 Fax 408 293-4993 E-mail: trinicat@pacbell.net Web site: www.trinitysj.org

Submissions to The Carillon may be sent via e-mail to the office or to editor, Sara Calkins, at calkins3@ix.netcom.com. Please indicate “For the Carillon” in the subject line.

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The person from Holy Women, Holy Men whom we commemo-rate this month is St. Boniface, who worked long and hard to Christianize the pagan population of Germany during what we have come to call the Dark Ages. Alt-hough a dangerous work, he felt truly called to do it, just as Paul

was called to undertake the many arduous and danger-ous journeys we read about in the Book of Acts. Boni-face’s is an interesting story, one as instructive about the failed potential for a united Europe that he strove so mightily to bring about as it is about his own personal adventures. It is a tale of how narrow regional and reli-gious antipathies can interfere with God’s work of re-demption. It is also, however, an illustration of the im-portance of following one’s call, whatever the risks. After all, Boniface’s work did not in the end go to waste, since Europe did become united under Christianity. The work was, though, at the cost of his own life. Despite his name, which certainly sounds Italian, Boni-face was not Italian at all. Not even close! In fact, he was actually, of all things, English, having been christened Winfrith upon his birth in Devonshire in approximately 675 AD. He was educated in monas-teries and then became a Benedictine monk and was ordained a priest, serv-ing in those same monasteries: Exe-ter, and Nursling, near Winchester. He devoted his life to teaching and preaching, actually assembling the very first Latin grammar produced in England. Winfrith was too adventuresome, however, to remain in the cloistered environs of a monastery working on Latin grammar. In 716, therefore, at about 40 years of age, he set out for Friesland, what today we would call the Netherlands, to assess the state of Christianity among the German tribes. It was, of course, long before we could begin to think of Germany as one country. Even France was hardly unified at the time.

What Winfrith found in Friesland was greatly discon-certing. Much of the land was pagan entirely, and, even where there were priests, the priests themselves were lapsing into pagan ways of worship. They were poorly educated at best. Furthermore, their loyalty to the Church and, even whether many were legitimately or-dained, were real issues. The lack of education across much of Europe was certainly one of the main reasons the era came to be known as the Dark Ages. In fact, for a couple of centuries beyond Boniface’s time a town’s priest was almost always the only literate person in it, if indeed he actually was literate. Winfrith at first gave up on his mission, but then went to the Pope, seeking his blessing. Upon receiving it, with the concurrence of Pope Gregory II, he changed his name to Boniface. What a wonderful name for him! Boni-face, which in Latin literally means “do-gooder.” So off he went once more to the German tribes, never again to return to England, and only visiting the Pope on a couple of occasions. He obtained letters from the Pope to many of the leaders of Friesland and Germany, as well as a letter of safe conduct from Charles Martel, the leader of the French, father of Pepin the Short, and grandfather of one of the greatest monarchs in European history, Char-lemagne, who, as if to emphasize the sad state of literacy

in Europe in the period, was himself illiterate. So off Boniface went, this time to see whether he could organize the Chris-tian churches of not only the German tribes but also the French, known then as Franks. He encountered many prob-lems, not only with respect to literacy, and with respect to paganism, but also, especially among the Franks, with re-spect to lay interference in Church matters, even the ordination of Bish-ops; the worldliness of the clergy; and the somewhat loose relationship be-tween the Church in France and Rome. He labored for years to strengthen and

unify the churches throughout all these lands. The pope’s appreciation for his labors resulted in his being made a Bishop, and then Archbishop, with his see at Mainz, from which he continued to work for many more

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Canon’s Corner

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Opportunities and Outreach

Ordinations at Trinity on Saturday, June 6 at 2pm. Susan Arnold and Karen Cuffie.

Trinity’s Got Talent

On Sunday, June 14 we will be having a Pot Luck and Talent Show after the 10:30 Service.

Bring a dish and come join the fun!

It is finally here! A talent show for Trinity to showcase the many talents we have among our members. We some-times get to hear about those talents, but seldom get to see them at church. This is a chance for everyone to showcase their talents and celebrate them at Trinity. We have had a great response with quite a few wonderful acts already signed up. If you have a special talent you would like to share, or just participate in the talent show, please sign up. All ages are welcome. This will be great fun. Please give your sign-up sheets or questions to Diane Bird.

Lunch for People Who are Homeless

For the second lunch of May, a small but hard-working group of 8 volunteers gathered on Saturday morning to cook and serve lunch to the residents at the San Jose Family Shelter near N. King and Mabury Roads. Once again, we served pasta with chicken and spinach, along with garlic bread, a green salad, milk, and ice cream sun-daes. Thanks to the five “friends of the parish” who volun-teered and for whom we are extremely grateful. A big thank you goes to Ben White and Susan Parks, two of our friends of the parish. Ben and Susan have been reg-ular volunteers for several years and teamed up to coordi-nate the cooking and serving, covering for Karen Gillette who was attending her son’s graduation ceremony. Next, thanks go to Leslie Barr for her menu idea and to Doreen and Marc Volcere who did all the shopping and dropped off the groceries earlier in the week.

Thank you to Darryl Parker, who was the head chef this morning and slaved over the hot stove sautéing the chick-en and veggies and concocting the delicious butter and garlic mixture for the garlic bread. Thanks also go to Rog-er Lobbes, who arrived early to clean and sanitize the counter top and brought to boil the big pot of water for the pasta. Thanks also to three other friends of the parish, Barb Purdy, Pastor Nichole LaMarche of the United Church of Christ and one of her parishioners, Priscilla Gil, who is in the Bay Area studying for her MBA. Everyone pitched in to help cut up chicken, slice up lots of spinach, wash the many packages and bunches of veggies, grate carrots, make our super garlicky garlic bread, and wash the dishes and utensils. With such good team work, we were able to finish the prepping and cooking and transported the food to the Family Shelter in time for the 12 noon meal service. At the Family Shelter, the servers were greeted in the parking garage by a petting zoo that was set up earlier in the day for the enjoyment and education of the children living at the shelter. Keeping themselves from being too distracted by the baby rabbits and chicks, the servers brought the food to the dining hall and served lunch to many appreciative families. A big thank you goes to Lucky supermarket, at the corner of Saratoga and Pruneridge Avenues in Santa Clara, and especially managers, Andrew and Reuben, and bakers, Bertha, Ernie, Amina, and Sandy for their continuing sup-port. They donated loaves of hot and fresh French bread for our garlic bread. Finally, another thank you goes to Ben and Susan for arranging, picking up, and delivering the baked goods. Next month’s lunches will be held on the Saturdays of June 13 and 20, 2015. At least 10 volunteers are needed for this local mission activity so if your schedule allows please consider coming and helping. We meet to prepare lunch at 10:15 am in the kitchen of the Parish Hall. No experience is required, just a desire to help those less for-tunate than ourselves. There is a sign-up sheet on the bul-letin board in the Parish Hall. If you have any questions, please ask any of the volunteers or Fr. Bird.

-Alan Fong

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Music at Trinity

We are conjuring up bells tolling and processional lines forming – it’s Graduation Time! Congratulations to all the Trinity graduates and Happy Summer to our students! We look forward to the summer time and a bit of a respite from heavy music making and we hope to hear the indi-vidual talents of some of our members through solos, du-ets and ensembles. This past month, we, the Trinity Choir had a wonderful experience with the Music Ministry of St. Andrew’s Epis-copal Church in Saratoga. Under their Music Director, Leroy Kromm, we celebrated the Feast Day of the Ascen-sion, May 14th, with a collaborated Evensong. We gave homage to John Ireland with his hymn, “My Song Is Love Unknown” and his settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis canticles and his venerable anthem, “Greater Love Hath No Man”. Yours truly was performing the role of Cantor and I had the enviable place of sitting down-stairs and thus hearing the sheer magnificence of the mu-sic. From this experience, we brought the anthem home and sang it on Ascension Sunday. We hope to continue this collaboration on occasion and bring St. Andrew’s Mu-sic Ministry to our worship space. For this occasion, back on Sunday, May 19th, I decided that we needed to move the choir back into the designat-ed choir area of the church. We hope to stay there for the future – the choir and myself can have a musical relation-ship that isn’t really possible with the choir sitting on the floor and myself at the organ. For so long, we have had to render the anthems with piano accompaniment rather

than organ. So, we shall try this for the time being and we can also still use the piano whenever appropriate. On the topic of the organ, please rest assured that we are taking measures to protect the organ during the construc-tion mode next door. Various problems could arise if it weren’t protected from the elements of the construction process next door. I’m sure that many of you know that we are the proud owners of an historic instrument, con-structed by Hook and Hastings company of Boston, Mas-sachusetts before the turn into the 20th century. Yes, a good part of our magnificent instrument is from before 1900! It has been cared and nurtured through the years with maintenance, a new console and some pipe addi-tions. You may have heard that, in the day, it was a recital instrument to many organ lumenaries, such as Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs, among others. Our instrument is in great need of some maintenance which occurs after many years of use – hopefully we can accomplish this soon after the construction next door is completed. Summer best wishes to all of you!

- Mike Joyce, Music Director

- yes we know what's missing. The Music Ministry is welcoming new voices to the Adult Choir. The ever-present need exists for female voices: sopranos and altos mostly. Male voices would always be welcomed, too! So, if you have been considering becoming part of our "merry band", why not do so now? Help the music ministry make our services extra special with your participa-tion in the choir. Contact Mike Joyce, the Music Director after any service or by mail - BassMike1017@aol.com, the parish office at (408) 293 - 7953, or talk to any current choir member for information on how to join us.

M sic Ministry

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something different on Tuesday than she did on Monday. Being able to read both the range and the center of gravity of opinions in a church is art and science and spiritual gift.

And if you disconnect and drift too far from that center of gravity, you lose the ability to lead that group of people.

Ortberg goes on to discuss the leadership style of George Washington during the revolution. Following Robert Mid-dlekauf’s text, Washington’s Revolution, Ortberg shows six areas of ambiguity which Washington faced: it wasn’t clear what the country wanted; Washington himself wasn’t sure at first whether he wanted self-government within the British Empire or full independence; he lacked a settled army, and had to keep recreating it; there was no executive office and no power to tax; should he try to defeat the British troops or just try to wait them out; he needed to use (often ineffective) French officers in order to keep his indispensable ally. Given the measure of ambiguity Washington faced, Ortberg’s advice to the church can be summarized in four princi-ples.

Don’t be paralyzed by ambiguity. Live with it, work with it, but don’t allow it to paralyze what I would like to call the urgings of the Spirit. Sometimes our decisions will be right and sometimes wrong. If they are wrong we will have the opportunity to correct them. If they are right well and good.

Clarity begins at home. If the parish’s leadership is clear about its goals, at least some action will be taken, which again can be adapted to new cir-cumstances and insights.

Facts de-fog ambiguity. Listen to feed-back but don’t follow it slavishly. As noted above, individuals often change their minds and circumstances change. The major need is constantly to be ready to re-evaluate our posi-tions even as we continue to move forwards. Churches like human beings need to grow and change or die.

Ortberg maintains, “When you cannot discover clarity, you may need to create clarity.” In a previous parish were I served this last principle was a deciding factor in going from inaction to a clear mandate for the parish. Because of serious discontent and conflict within the parish, vestry had adopted a principle that all decision must be made by consensus. After a year or so, I felt I could, as rector, no longer live with a principle whereby one dissenting opinion could paralyze every new initiative in the [false] name of consensus. An issue came up when the parish buy-laws called for a vote. After the consensus had been “reached,” with the discussion dominated by three people, I insisted that our by-laws must be followed. The issue was voted on and the “consensus decision announced by the senior warden” was overturned by a more than two-thirds majority. Only three people voted for the so called “consensus” decision, which was really a vote for the status quo. After the vote all three of the people who had voted ”no” said in the ensuing discus-sion how good they felt for being allowed to vote against something. They continued on vestry and we became much more decisive in our decision making. We had found clarity and were able to move forward secure in the fact we could still change our minds and make modifications, but no longer compelled to seek an uneasy com-promise, masquerading as consensus.

Of course, we could now be wrong and sometimes we were. But at least, under God, we were able to move forward and develop a renewed parish vision. Pastor Ortberg’s article is online at www.christianitytoday.org.

In Christ, - David

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Dean’s Desk, continued

John Ortberg

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Internet Insights

Canon’s Corner, continued

Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul.

Only kindness can do that.

-Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire,

preacher, journalist, and activist (1802-1861)

years for a more united and educated church. From this relatively sedate placement he was able to continue to work to bring more monasteries and education to the Germans, and, with the help of Pepin, to the Franks as well. Importantly, he improved education in monasteries, many of which were led by friends from England, to both men and women. His death was not without irony, since, now over 70 years of age, he traveled to Friesland to try once again to Chris-tianize and civilize it. One evening he was sitting in his tent reading peacefully when he and his companions were set upon by a group of pagans and were murdered. The meaning to be derived from the life of this good and valiant man is clearly that life is not always going to be easy—any easier frankly than the task Christ gave us all when he left us. Surely Boniface, this man of good deeds, ultimately would have found his work completed if he had lived longer, but it was enough for him, and it is also enough for us, to do what we can with the time we have.

It is the doing of our charge that matters, not whether we see its fulfillment. We may not all become saints, as Boniface did, but may we all be do-gooders with the lives God has given us, just as Boniface was with the life God gave him.

—Lance

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Celebrations!

Lisa Zivanic 6/1

Carol Stephen 6/3

Emma K. Garcia Jones 6/4

Emezie Anyanwu 6/6

Molly Tavella 6/10

Jennifer Clay 6/10

Hayley Fletcher 6/11

Donald Henneuse 6/11

Victor Pengosro 6/12

Leota Jett 6/15

Marcus Merino 6/17

Nils Schroeder 6/17

Anna Tamura (Wylder) 6/20

Amer Nyok 6/20

Camelotte Pengosro 6/23

Gerald Kepler Jr. 6/26

Allison Clay 6/28

“O God, our times are in your hand: Look with favor, we pray,

on your servants as they begin another year.

Grant that they may grow in wisdom and grace,

and strengthen their trust in your goodness all the days of their lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Happy Anniversary! Dan and Elizabeth Hanasaki 6/4

Michelle and Alan Fong 6/8

Diane and David Bird 6/9

Leslie and David Mooreland 6/10

Samantha and Philipe Michelin 6/21

Marilyn and Jerry Drino 6/25

Nanette and Donald Henneuse 6/26

Carolyn and Dean McCoid 6/27