Dear Friends,
For the past ten months we have been blessed with the presence of Sr. Marie Promise Atelon, SSM. Sr. Promise now the Reverend Sr. Promise, has become an important part of our family. Her gentle disposition, her depth of prayer-life, her sense of humor, and her soft-spoken Creole-French accent have brought us much joy. During her Wisdom Year, Sr. Promise has engaged in all aspects of our parish life and has given much to us. Having a professed religious walking alongside us these past months has taught us a great deal. She is the first ordained black woman to have ministered at the altar of Saint Thomas Church, and I know how much that has meant to many of you. Now, she is going to take a well-earned silent retreat and contemplate her future before she completes her studies at the seminary and prepares to be ordained as a priest. I truly hope that Sr. Promise will always see Saint Thomas as having a part in her life, and I hope it will not be long before she is back with us on a Sunday or during the week. In the meantime, please join me in giving thanks to God for Sr. Promise, whose faithfulness and humility have inspired us all.
Last Sunday we had an extra service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and your emails have shown that it was well-received. This Sunday, we shall enjoy a celebration of Choral Mattins. Once a mainstay of our Sunday morning choral worship 50 years ago, it is now rarely celebrated. The the parish became considerably more Eucharistically-centered under the rectorship of Father John Andrew (although the practice of daily Holy Communion was well established when he came). At my last post in the U.K., I enjoyed a Sung Eucharist and Mattins every Sunday morning, followed by Evensong. The Cathedral Choir or a visiting choir sang all three services all year round.
Since Mattins was sung at 11:15am (or 11:30am on a major feast day) and Evensong at 3pm, there was an amusing anomaly for the priest who was officiant. He or she would regularly sing “O Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day” as the tower clock chimed noon, and less than four hours later sing, “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.” Many a visitor would raise an eyebrow and ask why our days were so short! With the loss of so many weekday and Sunday evensongs with our choir, we hope that this Sunday’s worship will give us comfort as we hear the beautiful cadences of Archbishop Cranmer’s prayers, and Miles Coverdale’s most exquisite translation of the psalms. I wonder if we should explore how to have Mattins more regularly going forward?
Finally, the protests for Black Lives Matter continue in Manhattan and now, around the world. I am writing this part of my letter on Friday, June 19, or ‘Juneteenth,’ and I have been listening to the news about this anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States. I have been fascinated by the debate in the U.K., including in Oxford University, concerning statues of British people who were once part of the slave-trade or whose colonial involvement led to the suppression of indigenous peoples. I do not think that we can or should re-write history, indeed, insuring that our children are taught history is crucial, but I do not think it is wrong to question the prominence of statues of famous people who supported oppression, violent acts, or prejudice. Protesters in Bristol pulled down a statue of a former slave-trader and threw it into the harbor (echoes of the Boston tea-party?). It has been fished out now but the city council have decided it should be returned to a museum. That, to me, seems like a good compromise.
In Hull, where I grew up, you can visit Wilberforce House, the home of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was the principal voice for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain. With the support of Thomas Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano (a freed slave), and many others, saw the Act of Parliament passed in 1833. When I was a boy, the house was simply an historical relic – filled with Wilberforce’s furniture, and always ghostly quiet. Now, it is a museum on the history of the slave-trade with interactive exhibits and constantly filled with hordes of school children learning about their country’s past and the legacy of racism through British white supremacy and colonialism. Wilberforce was an evangelical Christian and, like John and Charles Wesley, put his faith into practice, even when that made him unpopular. You may be interested to know that we have a statue of Wilberforce on the tower of our Church, on the West 53rd Street side, where he stands next to Abraham Lincoln – two great emancipators looking down. Around the corner, we have two other images – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Mary McLeod Bethune. We learn much from our history but our history also informs our present.
A parishioner sent me these words from one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches. They have been quoted in the news recently, and I have been reflecting on them this week.
“Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” (Other America speech, 1967, Stanford University)
Note: Pamela Lewis, our Head Lector and a member of the Vestry, has written an additional article for the Living Church which explores the meaning of history and our various monuments. You can find this article on its web-based publication Covenant if you click here.
