Street preaching

It was a beautiful day in Tulsa today! After brunch, we drove around town a bit, stopping in at Oral Roberts University, where I got to preach at the front gate! LOL

These enormous praying hands originally graced the three-skyscraper "City of Faith" complex at ORU, where they used to have a hospital, medical school, and nursing school. When the hospital closed down, they turned the three buildings into general office space and had to move the hands to the main entry gate of the university. I thought I should go by ORU since it's been in the national news so much lately. LOL

I saw Richard Roberts on his television Bible show this week (the ORU stations are on all the local cable lineups), and, wow! he looks old now! Of course, he's 60, but he's still doing his smiley sing-speak routine with all his "deep meaning" and "expressiveness" like he was doing back when he and his first wife were still part of the ORU World Action Singers.

Quickie

Laurent and I went to Mass Sunday morning at St. Stephen. Just a quick in and out. It was kind of an odd Anglican music tribute day—the choir sang Charles Stanford's Beati Quorum Via (very nice) as a communion motet, a Kyrie from the Herbert Howells Mass in Dorian Mode (twas nice—they should sing the whole Mass setting), and the Agnus Dei from Gerald Near's Communion Service.....but then all the other service music was the usual odd mess of various modern Catholic settings. Hymns were Mit Freuden zart (Sing praise to God who reigns above) for the processional, Forest Green (Your hands, O Lord, in days of old) for the offertory, and Leoni (God is my great desire) for the recessional (why do they sing Leoni so often at this parish?).

Mozart on a Sunday morning

Every quarter, St. John's Lafayette Square has a special Sunday morning church service where they bring in an orchestra and they make use of it to enrich their worship experience, typically with Mozart Mass settings. Yesterday was one of those Sundays, so our good friend Max—a longtime St. John's parishioner—invited us to come down and hear the music.

We got there a little late and had to sit in the back row under the balcony. Before we left the apartment, Laurent had to change shirts four times before he was satisfied with his "look," and, still, he refused to wear a tie to match Ryan and me, as well as all of the other gentlemen (and most of their boy children) at the service. Methinks he's spent too much time with Catholics, who are known to wear any old thing to Mass, including shorts and t-shirts. We will eventually I trust, though, get him properly socialized for suitable Episcopalian company and society.

The centerpiece of the service was Mozart's Mass in C, K. 257. The chamber orchestra sounded very nice in the space, only marred a bit because the strings got a little out of tune by the Benedictus. The musicianship of the players was excellent, though, because they used their ears to tune together in ensemble passages. The fourteen-member St. John's choir provided the choral support, and the four soloists were taken from the choir.

They chose to do the Kyrie as a choral prelude and the Agnus Dei as a communion motet. In addition at communion, they did Alma Dei creatoris, The kindly mother of God the Creator, K. 277. Venite populi, Come, O people, K. 260, served as the offertory anthem. Also during the offertory they did Nun danket alle Gott as a congregational hymn. Other hymns included Austria as the processional, Cwm Rhondda as the recessional, and Azmon (O for a thousand tongues to sing) as the sequence (at St. John's, they do half the sequence hymn before and half after the Gospel).

It's always a pleasure to visit St. John's. They have an excellent music program, the rector is an engaging preacher, and the congregation is unusually friendly for an Episcopal church. But, sitting through a service always reminds me why I've never joined the parish: liturgy. They are a very low church parish, the clergy wears only albs and stoles during Mass (no copes or chasubles), they don't chant, they do that quasi-inclusive language liturgy nonsense (things like during the sursum corda saying "It is right to give God thanks and praise" instead of the correct phrase "It is right to give Him thanks and praise), and they abridge and rush through the actual prayers of consecration. They also have an unfortunate penchant for allowing priestesses to celebrate Mass; fortunately, the rector and one of the assistants were concelebrating, so the Elements were validily consecrated and we were able to receive.

Here's a picture of Laurent sitting in the "President's Pew" after Mass.

Umberto Eco on personal computers

Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist, medievalist, semiologist, and philosopher, compares Macs and PCs to the two main branches of the Christian faith: Catholics and Protestants.

The Mac is Catholic, he wrote in his back-page column of the Italian news weekly, Espresso, in September 1994. It is "cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach—if not the Kingdom of Heaven—the moment in which their document is printed."

The Windows PC, on the other hand, is Protestant. It demands "difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: A long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment."

Patron saints

Today is the feast day of two of the patron saints of homosexuals, SS. Sergius and Bacchus (the other patron saint, at least in some circles, is St. Sebastian, who is honored on January 20, or, for those Episcopalians who belong to Integrity, St. Aelred of Rievaulx, who's honored on January 12). I suppose that since this is a Sunday, the feast observance will be transferred to tomorrow, but October 7 is the official, traditional date.

In the early fourth century, Sergius (sometimes called Serge) and Bacchus were high-ranking Roman soldiers and Christians in charge of training young recruits, who were martyred because they refused to worship traditional Roman gods. They were apparently known as homosexuals and lovers (in the Middle Ages, it was believed that they had been joined in a union, much like marriage), because in their disgrace, they were stripped of their military uniforms and forced to ride through town dressed as women, in an early example of Army gay bashing. They were both beaten and tortured until Bacchus died. Sergius was then marched to another location in nail-studded shoes, and the night before he was executed, Bacchus appeared to him in a vision attired as an angel.

SS. Sergius and Bacchus are often cited these days in same sex marriages and union ceremonies. They are considered patron saints, not only for homosexuals, but for the persecuted or marginalized who dare to follow their heart and conscience in opposition to established authority.

Piccolo Mass

Finally made it to church for a change. We've been bad the last few Sundays. Ryan slept in, of course, but Laurent and I wandered over to St. Stephen for the 11 o'clock.

The choir sounded unusually nice today. They were doing portions (Kyrie, Gloria, Agnus Dei) of a setting called Canterbury Mass by Anthony Piccolo. Piccolo is on staff at New York City Opera and has ties to D.C., having formerly studied at Peabody in Baltimore and having worked with the National Symphony and composed a number of works premiered at the Washington National Cathedral. I thought the composition sounded quite contemporary Anglican, and the choir at St. Stephen always sounds best when it does Anglican literature.

The rest of the mass setting was an odd hodge-podge with the standard Proulx Sanctus, and a new (for this parish) Memorial Acclamation and Amen by Leo Nestor, the director of choral activities at Catholic University here in town.

Hymns today were a rousing St. Anne for the processional, We nur den lieben Gott at the offertory (with the improvised accompaniment much more interesting than the hymn itself), and the well-known Wesley Aurelia, but instead of the standard "The Church's one foundation" words, they used one of those weird sets of Catholic words "O Christ the great foundation." Oh, and for the communion marching music the congregation never sings, they did "O blessed Savior now behold," one of those dreadful GIA songs that doesn't resolve at the end.

Communion motet was "Hear My Prayer, O Lord" by Henry Purcell.

This month, the parish is encouraging re-devotion to the Blessed Virgin and to the Rosary, with comments during the homily trying to tie our increased devotion to Mary to decreasing the horrendous, violent crime in parts of the world. I'm not quite sure how that's supposed to work. I was never very good at mariolatry, though.

I want to go to Mass here next week, cause they are singing parts of the Rachmaninoff Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, but, alas, I think I'm stuck going to St. John's Lafayette Square next week with a bunch of friends to hear Mozart's Missa Brevis in F (with orchestra), followed by brunch. I just hope they have a real priest there to celebrate instead of one of their gaggle of priestesses.