Tipped Chalice

About this time twenty-eight years ago, we were looking forward to our move from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Apalachicola, Florida. We were packing up and, seeing that we would be moving from our larger three-story house on the bank of the Conodoguinet Creek into the much smaller rectory of Trinity Episcopal Church, we were deciding what to take with us and what not, giving away things, trying to get organized. 

Each summer for years, Linda and her mother had been going to Highlands, North Carolina, to participate in a week long oriental flower arranging seminar at the Stone Lantern, an oriental shop established and owned by Ralph DeVille more than half a century ago. And they were heading off to that, returning the Sunday before our departure for Florida. Joe was in the Army, Malinda was working at a nursing home in Harrisburg and not moving to Florida with us. It would be Linda and me and Tass, who was twelve at the time and looking forward to seventh grade at Apalachicola High School (grades 7 through 12).

We had had an interesting search process. One parish in the eastern end of our Pennsylvania diocese had called us, and they and we had been looking forward to our moving to Mount Joy and settling into their rectory, a quaint stone house next to the charming old stone church. Anticipating our arrival, they had made all sorts of kind arrangements for us, including for Tass at their school, and were devastated when we turned down their call. But I had to come home to Florida and, when the opportunity rose, could not decline the call to Trinity, Apalachicola.

What was on my mind this morning, for some reason, was the search process with another church in our Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, over on the western side of the diocese. We had been to visit those folks and look at their church, a lovely, ornate Anglo-Catholic, high church parish. Adjacent to the church and joined to it as part of the large structure, the rectory had no yard or garden, but fronted right on the sidewalk. It had been common, not at all unusual, for the rector or a member of his family, upon coming downstairs early in the morning, to find that a vagabond, many different ones over the years, had raised the living room window, climbed inside, and was asleep on the sofa. How those men knew that this was acceptable at this particular house, is beyond me; they apparently have a communication system of their own that far pre-dates the computer age. 

We never had a chance to find out though. On the following Sunday, their vestry and search committee came to our parish, Mount Calvary, to hear me preach (a regular part of the search process), I wasn’t the Celebrant for the Eucharist that morning: assisting the Celebrant, I served the chalice. The head of the search committee, who was also the Senior Warden, was wearing a frilly white blouse. She sipped from the chalice, handed it back to me, and I dropped it, spilling a full chalice of port wine all down the front of her blouse.

Definitely not parapraxis, a Freudian slip on my part, it may have been the work of the Devil; but I like to think it was the hand of the Lord. In any event, they turned me down and called another priest to be their rector. We declined the kind folks at St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Mount Joy, and headed home to Florida. 

TW+