Dear CCLJ,

First off we have some exciting news about our first physical event: Blessing of the Animals. See the attached flyer which was formatted by our own Nina Gilbert and the art work is from our own Melissa Melchor. We are looking forward to an outdoor gathering in front of the church on October 17th at 10:30 pm. Please join us!

In this email you will also find Nina and Bronwyn’s musical selections. Information about them is included in the “performance notes” section of the also attached PDF. In the PDF I share with you a few images that speak to the theme of work and rest. You will notice I began with a famous imagine of rest, Van Gogh’s, “Noon Rest.” On the opposite end of the spectrum you will see Peter Brugel the Elder’s dizzying imagine of labor in “The Dutch Proverbs” as well as Diego Rivera’s ode to industry in the “Detroit Industry Murals.” In between there are two images of blank canvases–the work of a Danish artist Jens Haaning. Haaning was asked by a Danish museum to produce two pieces of art commenting on the nature of labor. He was paid $84,000. The two blank works are what he came up with. A work he titled, “Take the Money and Run.”

While this might elicit a bit of a chuckle, Haaning is making an important commentary on the nature of work and labor in our world. See here the New York Times coverage of this story:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/world/europe/danish-museum-artist-jenns-haaning.html

 

Dear Church,

This week I am trying something different. I am writing out a long and descriptive email to you which blends scripture and my message as well as important information about our future events and the Blessing of the Animals event to take place next week. Please be sure to read it. However, if you’d like to listen to me read this email to you, I have included a recording of that below in lieu of a traditional message. If you’d prefer to listen, you can stop reading now and click on the attachment marked, “Message” below.

Today, you are also receiving this email from my personal email address because the church email would not accept any of the music attachments! If there is one thing I have now learned over the course of ministry these past two years it is flexibility.

Nina’s musical selections this week focus on the concept of time. This was inspired by a conversation we had with each other a few weeks ago about the strangeness of time. Of course the most famous scripture on time is from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

I’ve often referenced my favorite artist, Felix Gonzalez Torres–and I will once more: He was also very interested in the idea of time. He created a public billboard installation that included nothing more than the words: “It’s just a matter of time.” He went on to create multilingual versions of this and put them up in various countries around the world. Here are two examples. One in English and one in German.

The meaning here is open to debate and individual interpretation. Because, all things, one could argue, are just a matter of time. This week marks my fourth year with you. When I arrived in San Diego I was in my final days of 24 and now I am 29. At age 24 I never dreamed that an extensive period of my time among you would consist of virtual/email/remote ministry. None of us did. I never dreamed that we’d encounter a world like the one we’ve had to contend with over these past four years.

Time is opaque, time can be blurry. Time can offer both greater obscurity and greater clarity. I’m still trying to figure out time. I guess it’s just a matter of time until I do.

Speaking of time, it is almost time for our first in-person event. You will also find attached to this email the invitation and announcement to our first in person event since March 2020. Blessing of the Animals will be a primarily outdoor event on Sunday, October 17, 2021 at 10:30 am. We will not be having fellowship or refreshments after. This will be an opportunity for us to experiment with our new journey of holding events that are safe, Covid cognizant, and spiritually nourishing.

As we have begun the process of planning this event, we have realized that there is more to in-person events than we might have previously realized. Since making the announcement last week about the reintroduction of in-person worship I have heard from a few of you who have expressed that you will be sitting out the first several in-person services until Delta subsides. All of this is very valid.

That is why as we begin this phase-in to in-person worship we will take this slowly and cautiously. We also want to make sure that both our folks who desperately want in- person worship as well as our folks who aren’t ready yet are taken care of and listened to. That is why we are considering a plan of alternation, where no one will be without church for more than a week.

Since we will hold an in person event on October 17, we will go virtual October 24, and regather in-doors on October 31 for All Saints Worship.

It is our hope that this alternating of in person with virtual services will allow us the time to make this essential transition through the end of this year. We will not have choir for at least the rest of this year and will also not have fellowship for the remainder of this year as well.

As we begin to prepare for in person worship I want to share this clip from Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in NYC, a church which holds a very famous Blessing of the Animals:

As the wise sage who wrote Ecclesaisties points out there is a season for everything. There is a relatable order to God’s creation. Though there is finitude to our time, God’s time is eternal. What God does endures forever. Whatever we do, or don’t do can add or take away from that. We are called to stand in awe. As I listen to this scripture now it has new and different meaning. “A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing” feels almost like this was written specifically with our contemporary reality in mind. As does “A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.” We refrained from embracing and scattered across the city and now is time to begin to regather. And in time, there will be a time to embrace again. As Felix Gonzalez Torres reminds us, “It’s just a matter of time.” Time may be confusing to us, but in it there is an order and peace of God’s own making. The time we have been doing church this way has felt both simultaneously excruciatingly long and like the blink of an eye. Now is the time for us to begin something new. It won’t be like 2019 but it will be good. It will be good because we are doing the right thing and we have been doing the right thing all along.

I look forward to seeing you next week. It’s just a matter of time.

With grace,

Rev. Tim

PERFORMANCE NOTES
Nina Gilbert, music director and pianist
Bronwyn Allen-Kaeser, office manager and soprano

Our piano selections consider the concept of time—fast vs. slow, measured vs. irregular—in three settings of the same tune. Coincidentally, the original composer (Nicolai) created the hymn in response to a plague—the Pestilence of 1597 in the city of Unna, Westphalia, where he served as a Lutheran pastor.

Philipp Nicolai (1556-1608), O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright, 1597
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright, 1740
Three times through the tune: first Nicolai’s single line, then an uncredited later harmonization of the Nicolai, and then Bach. Nicolai follows the meter and accents of his poetry—some syllables longer, some shorter. Bach made the note lengths uniform and created several harmonizations, including this one from our hymnal.

I to the Hills Will Lift My Eyes: Psalm 121
Words from The New Metrical Version of the Psalms, 1909
Music from the Scottish Psalter, 1615

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright
A bicinium—that is, a piece for two musical lines—where the upper voice carries the tune in longer notes, and the lower voice offers a stylized accompaniment.

 

 

 

 

 

Week 85 October 31st, 2021

Dear CCLJ,

Thank you to everyone and their animal companions who came to our Blessing of the Animals celebration last Sunday. As many of you noticed, all 3 of San Diego’s main news stations arrived to our church to report on it. This week, I share with you the coverage from Fox 5:

Blessing Of The Animals In La Jolla

You might remember two weeks ago we watched news reports of Blessing of the Animals services in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC and this week we are watching news reports about our OWN church. Way to go us!

Next week we will come to the church for our first service inside the building. This service will celebrate All Saints Day and the departed saints of our lives. If there is a saint you’d like to honor, please send me their name. I will include them in our prayer.

We will also honor those members of our congregation who have passed during the pandemic and take some time to remember each of them. If you’d like to share any memories of Joan Kastner, Dr. Jerry Richards, Jerry Allen, or Susan Belliston please do so! I am working on collecting all of this this week.

The appointed psalm for this week is Psalm 126:

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream.

Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy;

then it was said among the nations,

“The LORD has done great things for them.”

The LORD has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.

Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb.

May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.

Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.

I enjoyed the deep dive we did into the psalms this past summer. This one is certainly one of praise and joy. Mouths filled with laughter and tongues shouting joy is a station in life we all want! But we must remember the psalmists advice that it is our Lord who has done such great things for us.

The Lord did a great thing for me this week and filled my mouth with laughter and tongue with joy. I was organizing a few things in my office doing some much needed post pandemic cleaning and I came across a memoir of one of the pastors of our church from long ago. I believe his ministry was in the 1920s or 1930s. No one with us today would have ever experienced him. However, at the end of his career he put together stories of his time in La Jolla. What I loved is the reminder that our world can change drastically, our technological capabilities can increase dramatically, and years upon years can pass and yet people are still people! The stories he shared could have happened anytime!

Two that stand out was his mention that during that time many people would come to the church to ask for money. I am assuming this must have been during the height of the Depression. Some of them were interesting characters who weren’t always polite. This pastor’s wife was always worried about him getting hurt if he passed up someone’s request for cash. Furthermore, she was a bit upset that he’d use his own personal money for such things.

Another stranger story concerned a man in a clerical collar who showed up at the pastors home on a Saturday night before church. He declared himself to be a pastor without a parish and was looking for work. He offered to preach the next day at CCLJ in return for whatever the church could pay him. My predecessor wisely denied the request and instead encouraged him to call the Conference office to inquire about pulpit supply opportunities. The next week a reporter for a national clergy magazine came to CCLJ to ask if a man wearing a clerical collar had shown up. They had word that he was in Chicago and somehow made it to California and was going from church to church looking to preach. The man was not a pastor, as he represented himself to be, and instead was a highly elaborate scam artist.

I hope to keep reading more! Oh, the joys of church, in 1930 or in 2021…the journey unfolds and continues. No matter what era we are a citizen of, this goes to show us that interesting twists and turns are par for the course. But as our psalmist wisely reminds us: The Lord has done great things for us. (And will keep doing them, too).

Also, you will find two musical pieces to guide your meditations and prayers this week. Here is the information that Nina has provided to us:

Florence Smith Price, Fantasie on “Sinner, Please Don’t Let This Harvest Pass,” 1929
One long piano solo this week, instead of two shorter. We first heard this Fantasie in March, shortly before my piano was tuned.
Price (1887-1953) dedicated this work “To my talented little friend, Margaret A. Bonds.” Bonds was Price’s piano student who grew up to become an influential composer herself. Price wrote this a few weeks before Bonds’ sixteenth birthday. You can hear the spiritual it’s based on here:
Sinner, please don’t let this harvest pass, sung by Myrna Summers:

Sinner, please don’t let this harvest pass, sung by Myrna Summers

Comfort, Comfort Now My People
Paraphrase of Isaiah 40:1-5 by Johannes Olearius, 1671
Translated from German by Catherine Winkworth, 1863
Music from the Genevan Psalter, 1551

Since our event last week was a smashing success, I look forward to our sequel to such success next week.

With grace,

Rev. Tim

Week 85 October 31st, 2021