Two Pipes and Two Sunsets

In a way it's too bad I decided not to mention specifics about my new employer in this journal. I could regale you with a really interesting geographic quirk, and tell you of my gracious and semi-successful bit of socialization today, and shock you with a seemingly paranormal incident that should more properly be attributed to sleep deprivation. But instead I'll just tell you that I'm getting better at my job and a bit more comfortable with my co-workers, and that an IT guru finally got my remaining computer issues resolved today. I even found sun and moon stickers to cover up the SpongeBob-shaped bit of old adhesive on the monitor.

In other news, I picked up the certificate dedicating one the the pipes in the St. Michael's organ to my 100-year-old friend, Eva. I was only one of perhaps half a dozen donors pooling funds to honor her in this way. The $100 donation for a pipe dedication is used to retire some of the debt the church incurred in acquiring, housing, installing and repairing that magnificent organ.

Back in 1998, when I was still relatively new to St. Michael's, I put up $100 ($20 at a time over the course of several months) to buy a pipe in honor of my high school boyfriend, the late Dan Cheney. After I made the last payment, the parish administrator left a voicemail on my home phone, asking me to call her. Today I finally got back to her about it. When I said it was dedicated to my dead boyfriend from high school, she said "You have one of those too, huh?" Hers came back from Vietnam in a body bag. Anyway, by the end of the day today, Alicia had put together Dan's long-delayed organ pipe certificate.

I don't really have anything else to say tonight, so here instead are some fresh pictures.



Another version of the shot I used as a background last night.




Tonight's sunset pre-show.



A couple minutes later and a block further east.



All did to this was resize it.

Still no moon!

Karen

More at the Door

This is a follow-up to my entry in the
Round Robin Photo Challenge: Mysterious Doors

On Wednesday, I showed you this door at the front of St. Michael's and All Angels Church, and the antiphonal organ division that lay beyond it and up the stairs. Today I took some more pictures, uncovering some mysteries and deepening others. Let me show them to you. They concern the bell pulls beyond this door, the mysterious doors upstairs, and the part of the organ you haven't seen yet. You're not going to see the entire organ this time, either, but at least you'll have some idea where it is and how big it is.

I should explain that despite appearances, St. Michael's is only 51 years old. Parts of it have been added on in phases over the years. More on that in a minute.

One of the additions and upgrades since I got here, at least I think so, was some sort of upgrade to the bells in the bell tower. I still don't know whether they are physical bells with clappers or electric or electronic ones, but I suspect they are physical bells run by electricity. In this way, they play consistently, in the same pattern each time, or possibly on one of two or more patterns the bellringer can select.

All that happens immediately beyond this door, where two bell ropes hang down. They are used to ring the bells as Mass begins. On Wednesday, you had to take my word for this, but tonight I have a little bit of photographic evidence.

Exhibit A: The Bell Ropes

I know it's hard to tell what's inside the room here, and what's reflected from outside. All I can tell you is that the two vertical lines are the bell pulls.

And what of the door on the balcony? Well, I had forgotten that there is another way onto that balcony, without using a ladder:

Exhibit B: The Balcony

This doesn't help, though. Neither of these doors is at the end of the loft where I was last Sunday. And anyway, are you really going to come out the door on the left, just to go back in through the door in the middle? Or vice-versa? Why? I have no idea.

Exhibit C: The Main Organ

This is where the main part of the organ is. No, really! It takes up a large, oddly-shaped room, directly behind what you see here.

One of the major additions to the church was in the late 1990s, when a large room was added behind the sanctuary to house the Æolian-Skinner pipe organ. Originally built in 1959 for a church in Cincinnati, the organ was purchased in 1989 by St. Michael's to replace another organ that proved irreparable. The huge replacement organ was stored for years at a local car dealership. Money was raised, the organ was repaired and upgraded, and the addition was built. In 1998, the main part of the organ was installed in the addition behind the sanctuary.

Remember the cabinet with the slats that boxes up the antiphonal part of the organ, but lets the sound out as needed? Well, the main organ lies behind a different sort of barrier. The rounded beige wall you see here is basically a cloth scrim between the organ and the main church. It lets the sound out, while hiding the organ away--but not completely. Do you see the hole in the wall in the picture above, between the main sanctuary and the side altar on the right with the little blue alcove? That's a window into a part of the organ:

Exhibit D: A Hole in the Wall

There's another opening like it this the other side, blocked from view in the other picture by the pulpit.

Exhibits E & F: The Main Organ Unmasked.

See? There's a lot of organ up front, and you can only see a bit of it!

As for the back, where the antiphonal division is, here's how it looks from the church:

Exhibit G: Looking Back


The end - a true story!

Karen

Tomorrow: May Rain

Beyond the Door

Update: my follow-up to this entry was posted late Sunday evening.

Note:  I looked at this entry briefly at work today, and all the pictures were too dark.  Why didn't anybody mention this?  See, my laptop shows everything lighter than desktop computers usually do, and now that I've changed jobs I don't correct the problem at work the next day.  Tonight I lightened a bunch of recent pictures and uploaded them again.  I hope that's better for everyone!  Oh, and while I'm at it, I'm going to swap out one or two of these photos for better shots, and update the links at the end. - Karen

Just a moment to explore
What goes on beyond the door
That will bruise our hearts no more
Than moonlight passing through a window
--sung by Scott Bakula in Romance/Romance (1988)

Round Robin Photo Challenge:  Mysterious Doors

I didn't have a particular door in mind when I suggested this topic to our merry Robins.  But the doors I seem to pass most often without ever going in are at St. Michael's.  This one, for example, the one to the Bride's Room, is mysterious in a couple of ways.  What's inside that a bride needs before a wedding?  Why is there no "groom's room?"  More important, going through that door means that one is about to embark on the much greater mystery of married life itself.

I've never been through that door.  There could be anything in there.  But I imagine that it's basically a dressing room.  There was nothing like that at St. Patrick's in Syracuse when I married John--not that I recall, anyway.

But for me the main mystery door at St. Michael's is just to the right of the main ones that lead into the church itself.  It's usually locked and barred, but not on Sunday mornings. Just as Mass begins, Proscovia or someone else opens it and pulls on one of the two ropes inside, setting off the (probably electric) church bells.  I always wondered whether there was a real bell pull, or just a button to push.  And was the space beyond the door just a closet-sized chamber with the bell controls in it, or something more?  It didn't look as if there could be room for more than the bell mechanism, whatever it might be, and maybe a broom or something.  Oh, and a fire extinguisher.  The red and white sticker in the window says, "Fire exinguisher inside."  I don't know how you'd get to that fire extinguisher in a hurry, except when the door is unlocked for Mass.  That makes sense, though, because that's when acolytes and deacons and priests are playing with matches, carrying candles and burning too much incense.

Well, on Sunday, May 22nd, totally by accident, I found out what else was beyond that mysterious door.  And it was much more than I could have imagined.

It happened like this.  That afternoon, a nationally-recognized organist named Todd Wilson was going to play a concert on the church's Æolian-Skinner pipe organ.  This pipe organ rededication performance was to celebrate the fact that the antiphonal section of the organ (the part in the back loft of the church) has been installed by the organ builder and is now operational. 

I'd been seeing those shiny copper-colored pipes for months, and had tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to get a good picture of them.  It's hard to get a good angle on the "choir loft" (except that the choir never goes up there, as far as I know!) from ground level in the rather dark church.

Anyway, I was pretty sure that I couldn't make the concert, but I wanted to get a picture of Todd Wilson for the church web site.  So I left coffee hour and Eva's gingerbread and went back into the church.  Wilson was warming up with a truly glorious and complex piece that reminded me of a (much simpler) Christmas song I sang in choir many years ago. 

I waited a few feet away in an empty pew of the almost empty church until he finished playing.  As he played, another man was walking around, checking the openings to the main banks of organ pipes, adjusting doors and the evaporative cooler to control heat and humidity--in short, tweaking.  This was the organ builder, Grahame Davis. He's important to the rest of this story, and deserves recognition for his work.  

When Mr. Wilson finished his organ solo, I introduced myself as the church webmaster and asked to take a photo of him for the church blog.  He recognized me from Mass (I got to read Genesis, Chapter One on Sunday) and graciously posed for me.  He's a very nice man, and clearly very talented and dedicated to his craft. 

As we chatted about the organ, I mentioned that I'd been trying unsuccessfully to get a good picture of the pipes in the loft.  Wilson immediately suggested that I go up and get a closer look at them!  The organ builder agreed, and immediately took me off on a private tour. And guess how that tour started?  Yup: he led me through the mysterious door to the right of the church entrance!



From there we went up narrow wooden steps to the loft where the new Antiphonal division of the organ was installed.  From the back of the loft, there's not much to see, at least under normal circumstances.  Most of the pipes are housed in a big wooden box structure, called a cabinet. Grahame Davis explained that this was to help mute the powerful pipes within, so that they can be played softly and still have the proper tone and pitch.  When the organist (usually Jane Haman, our choir director) wants to play them more loudly, foot pedals can be used to open wooden flaps behind and between the pipes, letting more of the sound out.  The builder opened a couple of doors, one in the back and one on the side, and I took a bunch of pictures of this hidden treasure. 

 

When I came around to the front of the pretty copper ones, I got to hear at least one of them, up close and personal!



The last of the interior pictures is of the upper door to the loft, and the completely unimpressive room beyond it.  If you didn't pay attention to that long duct-like pipe thing on the floor, and the giant wooden box thing on the right, you wouldn't know there was anything special here.



I didn't take a picture of the tiny room where the bell pulls are.  I forgot / didn't have time. Besides, we should preserve a few mysteries!
 
Now, the main reason I never knew that door went up to the loft was that I always assumed that this other external door was the way up to the choir loft (except that the choir never goes up to the loft).  This door is on a balcony above the main double doors.  I don't know how you would even get up to this door to go through it.  Perhaps a ladder?  And if you do, I'm still not sure what you'd find on the other side.  I didn't see that door from inside the loft.  Maybe it's where the bells are.  Or maybe I just didn't notice it. Either way, the mystery of the upper door remains unresolved. I could always ask Father Smith, but where's the fun in that?

And now my story is all told. - Dr. Seuss, in One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Now go look at everyone else's mysterious doors:

Carly (OndineMonet) Ellipsis - posted!

Duane (fdtate714) Sotto Voce - posted!

Steven (sepintx) (sometimes) photoblog - posted!

Betty (rap4143) My Day My Interests - posted!

Amy (babyshark28) substance; or lack of - posted!

Mary (alphawoman1) Alphawoman's blog - posted!

Dawn (AuburnDawn) Dawns Drivel - posted!

Kat (mskatdabrat) From Every Angle - posted!

Robbie (krobbie67) Robbie's Ruminations - NEW!

Michael (madmanadhd) Confessions of a Madman...  - NEW!

Monica (photographybymon) Mamarazzi - NEW! - and 2ND ENTRY!

Patrick (pattboy92) A Stop at Willoughby - NEW!

Aunt Nub (montaukny) Aunt Nub's Empty Head - NEW!

And me, I'm

Karen

but you already know that, don't you?  Have fun!

Repose, Part Two

(Note: read the entry below this one first!)

This year at the Altar of Repose I did pretty much what I always do on this occasion.  Part of it I spent in prayer, of course. This consisted mostly of a rather self-absorbed monologue in which I attempted to make a conntection, intellectually and emotionally, with Jesus: who he is, why he did what he did, and what he wants now. The rest of the time I read a couple of psalms, two chapters of Acts and two of John, and the Maundy Thursday readings I'd missed in favor of a four hour class about the equity method and the purchase method of accounting for business combinations.

At the end, just before Father Smith and his daughter arrived for the next half hour slot, I found myself wondering: did I get anything out of this? Am I supposed to get anything out of this? Or am I supposed to be giving something to it? If the latter, did I manage to do so?

I don't know, but I tried.

Karen Funk Blocher

Good Friday, 2004

Repose

Last night at midnight, my friend Kevin and I spent half an hour reading and praying at the altar of Repose in the back of St. Michael's & All Angels Church. The Eucharist lies hidden away there for nearly 24 hours each year, from the end of Maundy Thursday mass until the beginning of the Good Friday service. Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper, with its institution of Holy Communion, otherwise known as Holy Eucharist, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus. Maundy Thursday also commemorates Gethsemane, with its sleepy apostles and the sweating of blood, and the arrest of Jesus. Good Friday commemorates his death and burial.

Some of the Eucharist consecrated on Thursday is set aside for Friday, which has no Eucharistic Prayer of its own. While it's there at the Altar of Repose, parishioners and clergy keep vigil in half hour shifts, usually two at a time, all night and all day. In effect, we are waiting up with Jesus on the anniversary of the Passion, staying awake as Peter, James and John did not.

All this takes place at St. Michael's, in an area between the last pew, the ushers' table and the church's heavy wooden doors. The Altar itself is an an alcove on the right. Behind it is a painting of Jesus, attended by angels as he suffers. In front of it are two large candles, which I long to straighten--they both list to the right. To the left is a bank of votive candles, which may be burned for 25 cents each. Accomodations for the faithful include a rickety kneeler with attached rail, a couple of folding chairs, and the usual books: the Book of Common Prayer, the Eucharistic Lectionary and the Hymnal, not that we would sing through this. Some years there are laminated printouts of suggested prayers. Not this year. We're on our own.

(to be continued)

Silent Night

Last night I went to post a fun little piece on the expression "did good" (hi, Howard!), but AOL's journal posting function was apparently offline.  I'll try again tonight.  Also on tap: another new fictional journal entry, this time from Prince Talber of Londer.  You can see it now. though, on his new page on www.mavarin.com.  I've been posting one character profile a day over there, and he's the latest.

I've accessed Musings from Mavarin from AOL for Mac OS 10, on the latest AOL for Windows, and via the Web (Netscape and IE). It's highly variable.  Sometimes I have text controls, sometimes not.  Sometimes I can paste prewritten text into this box, sometimes not.  This seems to be true even comparing different instances using the same program and computer.  Weird, huh?  The other day I had to retype my Palm Sunday piece from scratch, and partly from memory, when the second entry ran too long.

Which reminds me, this entry is probably long enough.

Palm Sunday Heresy, Part Three

These days I act as crucifer about twice every six weeks, and read to the congregation about once every ten weeks. I never quite get it right, somehow.  When reading, I go a little too fast, or lose my place and blurt out, "Wait a minute...," or stumble over  a word. Carrying the crucifix on a long pole near the front of the procession, I walk a little too fast, or too close to the thurifer (incense-bearer), or let the candles (candle-bearers) get ahead of me, or knock into something, especially outside before and after Mass. Up in the sanctuary, I forget to go get the stand for the readings, or to put it back, or to retrieve the cross during the prayer over the catechumen, until Proscovia nudges me or gives me a look or says my name. So I don't do it perfectly, ever, but I get by. Afterward I eat high carb food at coffee hour, and go home and update the church website at http://smaa/mavarin/com/smaa.html, or more likely just the schedule page.

Why do I forget to do what I'm supposed to do? I'm thinking about what I believe, or the parts of the ritual others perform, or the pain in my knees as I kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer. I'm trying to sing a hymn without the hymnal, because I never have one when I serve as crucifer. I'm wondering whether 98-year-old Eva's okay, because she didn't come to Mass, or she fainted, or she just stepped outside. I'm thinking about the readings, and the prayers, and the styles of the different priests and what they each have to say.  I'm thinking about my novels, or my school work, or my stomach ache. So mind mind wanders, until Proscovia nudges me or my mind wanders back on its own.

It's not good enough. I know it's not good enough. I'm not attentive enough. I still don't know exactly what I believe. I don't do much to save the world or feed the hungry. I don't have faith the size of a mustard seed.

But at night I go to bed and pray my repetitive, idiosyncratic prayers, full of gimme and give us and not at all full of praise, because I'm not good at it and don't know how to say it sincerely. I think about Heaven, which I neither understand nor reject entirely. And I talk to God, as I've always done.  He never really answers, but I know he's there.  He's real. He's listening. There's no ecstatic revelation, just a feeling, the same one I've always had.

And, because of Him, it is enough after all.

Palm Sunday Heresy, Part Two

Fast forward nearly 20 years, during which I hardly ever went to church, hardly ever looked at a Bible. In all those years of waiting for inspiration to hit, waiting to find out what I believed, I never really worked at it.  I thought going to church and saying the creed would make me a hypocrite. I did, however, build a rather impressive collection of Madeleine L'Engle books, including a bunch of religious nonfiction. I've never read most of them, but I got the impression from what I did read that the Episcopal Church, a cathedral of which L'Engle attended, was worth a try. It seemed to have all the things I liked about the Catholic Church, and none of the stuff I didn't. That's an oversimplification, but it proved to be fairly accurate.

So I went to the church up the street from me, the one with a socially conscious sign out front. I've been going there ever since.  It turns out that faith, for me, at least, is more a function of doing in public than of thinking in private. I was never going to find faith (much less prove anything to myself logically) by ignoring the subject most of the time, never going to church, never reading the Bible or any other books on the subject. I had to go to church, read the readings, listen to the sermons, think about the prayers, and maybe have a cup of ice tea in the Parish Center afterward. Once I started doing these things, I discovered that the Nicene Creed didn't bother me nearly as much at age 40 as it did when I was 20. I don't believe every word on a literal level, but I believe them on some level. And I learned that maybe there is a little spark inside me that says that God is there, God is real, even if I don't feel it every second, even if I don't understand, even if I don't know exactly what to believe.

(one more part to follow.)

Palm Sunday Heresy, Part One

When I was about six or seven years old, I used to hold my own little mass in what my family called the game room, the library-shelved, leftover furniture filled finished room next to the basement, in which my mom met with her patients in private practice. I would put a purple towel on my mom's desk, set up a statue of Mary that my godmother had given me, and read through the Weekly Missal, very fast. I didn't quite credit, at that age, that it didn't count unless there was a real priest present, and that only men were priests. In those days, no women served at Mass at St. Anne's in Manlius, New York. Acolytes were called altar boys, and even the readers were male deacons at least.

By the time I reached high school, some of the altar boys were girls, and there were lay readers, some of them women. I wasn't among them, although I still sat in a pew every Sunday. I was in my Jesus Person phase, illustrating a Jesus Christ Superstar album cover for art class with a somewhat graphic depiction of the crucifixion, singing songs from Godspell at Area All-State, going up to the front at the War Memorial when invited to do so by David Wilkerson protege Nicky Cruz, where some disciple wrote down "H.S" as the reason I came forward. Despite everything, though, I didn't get what I was looking for, a little spark of feeling in my soul that I knew for sure to be God, waving and calling out, "I'm here. I'm real."

I kept looking for that through college. I went to church at St. Patrick's across town to see Father Ed Van Auken, who once said, "Theology's not my bag." I attended get-togethers at Newman House where a priest whose name I've forgotten preached against the Pill I was taking. I had long discussions about God with a close friend who wanted to be among the first female Episcopal priests, but who was rejected. I agreed less and less with the Catholic Church and the Creed. I wasn't sure what I believed any more, in something, certainly, but not in "the resurrection of the body." Then I married an agnostic, soon to be an atheist, who liked to say, "one man's religion is another's belly laugh." That was the end of my churchgoing, except for the occasional Christmas, for many years to come. If I didn't believe it, why go to church to say it?

(to be continued)

Lent

Growing up Catholic, I was used to the concept of "giving up something for Lent." As an adult Episcopalian, I don't always do it that way. Sometimes I add things rather than take things away. Or do both.

This year, pretty much everything I've tried to "give up" for Lent, such as cheating on my diet, hasn't worked out well. I'm doing better with the additions than the subtractions. I'm working my way through the Gospels (and probably Acts), and reading a book called Girl Meets God. A schedule of three chapters a night on the Gospels tends to make me rush a little,cutting down on comprehension when I'm already tired (I do this at bedtime). Funny how much of it seems a little unfamiliar, even after all these years, partly because I read New American Bible at home, NRSV at church.

Karen