July 30, 2015



Wedding altar flowers
by Lisa




 We will have ONE service only this coming Sunday, August 2nd and the 10th Sunday after Pentecost. The service will be followed by Coffee Hour at the Rectory at 247 Pound Road in Madison (603-367-8220). We hope you will join us for this annual relaxed social time. Beverages and breakfast casserole will be provided. If you’d like to bring something for the table, it would be most welcome. 10:30 to noon.
   



Our house has a ramped entrance (wheelchair accessible). If walking is a challenge, please park in the driveway or the side-spur, or have someone drop you near the house. Most parking should be along Pound Road. The road is narrow, so please park in the downhill direction (same side as our house). That’s most easily accomplished by driving past out house and the next two houses and turning around in Ox Pasture Lane so that you are headed down hill.


Are you coming? Have you invited or encouraged someone to join you?
Do you have your ticket?

Our Lobster/Steak Dinner is just days away
(August 7)! Tickets must be purchased by Sunday so that we can order our lobsters and steaks accurately!
In addition, we are in urgent need of some additional help with set-up and clean-up, and a few more people to make a batch or two of blueberry buckle (recipe to be provided).
 In Tamworth Saturday morning? Duane invites you to stop by the Cook Library to take in his exhibit of 20+ photos of Barnstormers plays. It seems that they'll stay up well into August. In particular, you're invited to stop by this Saturday morning, Aug. 1, starting at 10:30 to chat with Duane about the photos. A guided tour of them will start at 11 a.m.
The library is open Mon 10-2, Tues & Wed 10-8, Fri 10-5, and Sat 10-4.
  Last weekend was a wonderful reflection of our parish community. Saturday morning Bobby-Lu Ellis and Lil LaRose pledged themselves to each other in a joyous celebration of Holy Matrimony. In the afternoon almost 100 friends, family, and parishioners gathered to celebrate the life of Karl Svendsen.
Special thanks go to many: to Sally DeGroot for organizing the reception and for valiantly dealing with clean-up as well; to so many of you who provided delicious food for the table and a warm welcome to the wider community; to Gretchen’s EFM friend Patty Carter, who served as torch-bearer; to Dale for the flowers for Karl’s service and to Lisa for the wedding altar flowers which graced the altar for Sunday as well; to Vestry members who responded to the call to make our church home ready for so many visitors; and to our faithful altar guild team who handled a very liturgically full weekend. Thanks, too, to Cathie Lewis for hosting the post-coffee hour conversation about General Convention!
Food for thought from the Rector…

The Rector’s schedule next week: Back in the spring I agreed to serve as a volunteer chaplain to five-day “Victorian Camp for Girls,” to be led by Tamworth educator Richard Posner. Why do they need a chaplain, you ask? These five days are to be an immersion program for 8 to 14 year-olds, exploring what life would have been like if they were to have come up to this region (by train from lower New England and New York) in the late 1800s with their families as summer visitors. There’s also a segment on what life was like for local girls who often served as summer servants. What would they have done with their time (in the absence of internet and cell phones)? What would it have been like to explore these woods and mountain in long dresses and sun hats? What might they have written in their journals, painted with their water colors, drawn with their pens? What natural encounters would have inspired poetry? What spiritual and religious understandings would they have had? What social and class understandings? What questions would all these girls and young women be asking?
View from Mount Willard, one of next week's camp destinations 
Since a religious foundation (most likely Christian and often as young Episcopalians) would have been central to their culture and experience, and might very likely be less so with these girls today, it seemed to me that a chaplain might offer some important understandings. It also responds to one of my own desires, as well as the Vestry’s desire: for me to spend some significant time with people in the area who are not currently church-goers – listening to their lives and their stories, and getting to know each other. I’m sure I’ll come back with some stories! And if you encounter a troop of young women with chaperone and chaplain, dressed in a semblance of Victorian dress, your will know the story!
Though I will be out of the office from 9 to 3, this will be a “work week” for me. Deb will be out of the office on Tues morning (Aug 4th) but in for the remainder of the week, in the mornings as usual, and I will check in mid-afternoon, attending to church business in the latter afternoons and evenings. If you would like to reach me Tuesday through Friday next week, feel free to call me home (367-8220) and leave a message. I will return your call in the evening.
And in the spirit of the era of this next week’s venture of mine, these two poems …
by Emily Dickinson
It’s all I have to bring today –
This, and my heart beside –
This, and my heart, and all the fields –
And all the meadows wide –
But sure you count – should I forget –
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 
A slash of Blue –
A sweep of Gray –
Some scarlet patches on the way,
Compose an Evening Sky –
A little purple – slipped between –
Some Ruby Trousers hurried on –
A Wave of Gold –
A Bank of Day –
This just makes out the Morning Sky.
Blessings in this heat of summer…
and even if you’re not part of the Victorian Camp for Girls, why not put pen or brush to paper and reflect on God’s presence in your life here and now?
See you in church,
Heidi+