Ten Years

With a nearly hundred-year-old love song continuing to drive me batty floating through my mind, this morning I turned online to Youtube for some favorite hymns. Fanny Crosby’s “To God be the glory” is one good old. Wesley’s “And can it be” another, for some reason I especially like the last verse, “No condemnation now I dread, Jesus and all in him is mine. Alive in him, my living head, and clothed in righteousness divine, bold I approach the eternal throne, and claim the crown through Christ my own.” 

First heard that hymn on a tape I bought in the bookshop at the cathedral of St. Michael and all Angels, Coventry in 1995. On the August 1994 occasion of our tenth anniversary at Trinity, Apalachicola, the congregation gave us a trip to England, where Tass was in school. Tass planned our itinerary, and we went in 1995, life's best and most memorable trip. The visit to Coventry was one of many highlights, as well as to York, where the cathedral is called York Minster. We were there on Saturday to tour, then went to a worship service Sunday morning, cutting the time close to our train reservation south. We encountered resistance about bringing our luggage into the minster because of fear we might be terrorists with explosives, but were admitted when we proposed to keep our luggage with us and against one of the unimaginably enormous fluted columns inside the building. Leaving immediately the service was over, we did catch our train. 

That trip was a life’s highlight, with Tass.

Last night at his tenth anniversary celebration, Father Steve, our rector, also was given a trip, I think a trip to Italy, but the mike wasn’t on and I couldn’t hear the presentation, or maybe it was my ears. The celebration was as much fun, and more, as any Christmas Eve and Easter event, packed church. Because of my cold, I didn’t touch the sacraments, and we left soon as the service was over, not even staying to eat a hamburger. 

The bishop got a glimpse of Wednesday evenings at HNEC as Fr. Steve said “Come on up, kids,” and at least a couple dozen children crowded round the Altar for the Eucharistic Prayer. With Fr. Steve, we have the world’s greatest church, and I loved hearing Judy, our Head of School, say during announcements and presentations, that Father Steve was voted the most popular boy in the school.

Thos+