July

19th Annual Bach Festival

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Where were you when you last had a spiritual experience?" 

 

 

Beautiful weather (we sat outside) and lively discussion made for a lovely afternoon! We hope that Bishop Mariann will make this a regular event for young adults!

 

 

 

Greetings from Grace is published every month to inform and engage members and friends of Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown.

 

In Christ's Redeeming Love,

Summer's change of pace brings with it, for many, a change of scene with vacations, camps and programs that take us to places for rest, relaxation and recreation.  

 

Grace Church will offer again this summer an opportunity to  participate in A Holy Pilgrimage DC - our version of Vacation Bible School which will take us to area ecumenical and interfaith places that will provide a brief glimpse into the worship and way of life of those we visit.

 

Offered during July and August, the Pilgrimage builds on successful Grace VBS 'pilgrimages' during the past few summers. An informational session was held on Sunday June 24 during which parishioners learned about the upcoming summer schedule and began this summer's Pilgrimage with a service project - making sandwiches for the Georgetown Ministry Center.

'A Holy Pilgrimage' is intended for all ages, and is an excellent opportunity to invite friends and family to come along and come to know a bit about the sites we visit and also about Grace Church's commitment to community involvement and community understanding.

 

The program is led again this summer by Jacqueline Walters, Sunday School Coordinator. I am a new face at Grace with a love of and experience in ecumenical and interfaith endeavors and I'm happy to be working with Jacqueline this year for the first time.

 

This summer, don't merely go on vacation - go on pilgrimage! 

 

Friday, July 6, 12:30 pm

Masjid Mohammed Mosque; meet with Imam, observe prayers, lunch

 

Saturday, July 14, 9:00 am

Adas Israel Synagogue; meet with Rabbi, attend worshop

 

Monday, July 23, 12:00 noon

National Cathedral; organ demonstration, highlights tour ($5)

 

Sunday, July 29, 1:30 pm

Shrine of the Immaculate Conception; tour

 

Saturday, August 4, 4:00 pm

St. Nicholas Orthodox Cathedral; tour

 

Saturday or Sunday, August 11 or 12, final day and time TBD

Botanical Gardens; picnic, hike/walk

 

Details and updated information are available on the Grace Church Website. Attend one, a few, or all of the visits, and come away with a deeper sense of the many ways God is at work in the world around us.

 

Please sign up on the kiosk at church or email the office so we know how many people will be attending each outing. For more information contact Jacqueline Walters (646 -265-0360) or Reverend Sarah Motley (240-483-0349). 

 

Hillary Liebtag and I met during the summer of 2010. I heard that she was new at Grace and so we got together for coffee after work. We immediately hit it off and now two years have flown by.

 

Hillary moved around a lot as a child and is the youngest of four. Growing up, Hillary lived in the suburbs of Chicago Ill., Fairfield County Conn. and then moved to Chapel Hill, N.C. when she was 16. 

 

Hillary said, "it really shaped my values because having moved a lot, my 3 siblings and I became really close. We had lots of car rides and Dance Dance Revolution games in the basement before we met our own friends. We all live across the country now but make time for sibling trips and family vacations and are really involved in each other's lives."

 

Hillary moved to D.C. because she got a job at a consulting firm out of college. She wanted to live 5 hours or less away from her parents - so D.C. was the obvious choice for her job search.

 

Hillary said that when she moved to D.C. the shock of not having any siblings or knowing anyone was really scary so she reached out to her family for advice. Her dad told her to get involved in everything and to find a weekly routine. With that advice, she decided to look up an Episcopal church near her new home in Rosslyn. 

 

Hillary said, "I found Grace's beautiful website and saw Elizabeth Hill's picture in the young 20s30s40s group. We emailed a few times, got coffee and discovered we had a lot of similar connections from Chapel Hill. I had such a warm welcome from her and from the community of Grace and was so lucky to feel for the first time since I moved to D.C. like it was home."

 

What Hillary loves most about Grace are the people. We discussed how coming in as a young single person in other churches can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, but the minute Hillary stepped into Grace everyone was welcoming and loving. 

"From warm hellos during the Peace, to a buzz of conversation at coffee hour I've never felt left out. I feel like the people are there for the right reason, to take time out of their week to appreciate what they have and give thanks to God," said Hillary.

 

Hillary likes to spend her free time working out, exploring the city, and assisting young horseback riders at Rock Creek Park Stable. You might see her in riding chaps leaving Grace after church on her way to the stables.

 

Hillary works in sales at Living Social helping small businesses attract new customers and helping customers in the Northeast discover their cities. Hillary's sales skills made her a natural for the role of Silent Auction Chair for the annual Friends of Grace Gala. We are grateful to Hillary for bringing in around 15 items donated by local businesses for the auction.

 

Hillary's goals for the future are to build a career that continues to challenge her, travel, get married, start a family, and build a house and life she can enjoy.

 

The motto Hillary tries to live by is "be who you are not who others want you to be." Hillary said she can be a bit of a "goofball" and she tries her hardest to not worry about what others think and just live life to the fullest.

 

On a perfect spring morning, Grace Parishioners gathered under white tents on Wisconsin Avenue. The mood was calm and relaxed, but we knew that wouldn't last. 

 

We were expecting approximately 10,000 visitors to our neighborhood, and we'd gathered to greet, direct, and sell tickets to the expected crowd. Our overarching reason for being there was to support Georgetown Ministry Center's services to the homeless.

 

The Taste of Georgetown began as Grace Church's Fall Festival. I remember taking turns at selling tickets and serving food on Grace's lawn during my first festival, in 1995. In those days, the restaurants dropped off their delicacies, and we spooned it up!

 

The Taste of Georgetown has grown since then, expanding beyond the gates of Grace and filling four blocks of Wisconsin Avenue. Many aspects of the Taste remain the same: food from Georgetown's best restaurants; crowds of people new to Grace; the mission of raising money for the homeless. But perhaps the most important constant is the Grace community. 

 

For 19 years, Jim and Janet Sale have sold Taste tickets. Every year I can remember, David Bujard, Jean McKinney, Helen Buhr and Lenore Reid have worked as greeters, ticket sellers, and yes, in those early days, food handlers. I cannot begin to count -- and thank -- all those who have donated their time to the nineteen Tastes.

 

Many new faces have joined us during the years, but one thing of which we can all be proud: Grace Church's commitment to helping the less fortunate. Grace was founded as a mission church more than 150 years ago, and from our origins as a church for poor watermen to our present as a church in one of DC's "entertainment districts", we've always found ways to help those in need. The exact cause may change, we add new faces (and sometimes lose familiar ones), but our commitment remains.

This year, preliminary figures provided by the Business Improvement District show just under $100,000 raised through ticket sales. Figures are not yet available on how much of that amount must be used to offset expenses, but we predict a healthy contribution to the Georgetown Ministry Center!

 

Of the 47 volunteers handling tickets, questions and crowds on June 2, 29 were Grace Parishioners. We were joined by personal friends, Georgetown University students, local business people, and relatives.  This is the mission of Grace Church -- to serve and to encourage others to join us in service. 

 

See more photos from the day in the left column of this newsletter. 

 

"When that April with its showers sweet..."

 

So Chaucer begins his Canterbury Tales...

 

Just this April past, a band of pilgrims set out to visit medieval cathedrals contemporary with the Canterbury Cathedral of Chaucer's time, but across the English Channel and south to the land that forms a circle surrounding Paris. 

 

Their pilgrimage was, as Chaucer's, a reverent journey to sacred sites, but with the added element of time travel, for it was taken with a conscious effort to experience the wonder of the phenomenon of the first Gothic Cathedrals as did the people of the 11th century--through the light of the stained-glass windows. 

 

With my friend and colleague in such adventures, Donna Osthaus, I led a group of 15 on a course/tour they titled The Liturgy of Light: An on-site course to discover how the desire to express a New Light of the Divine manifested itself in the architectural creations of the High Middle Ages.

 

Pilgrims they were, but rather than having one sacred site, Canterbury Cathedral, with the relics of the freshly martyred St. Thomas a Becket to view, and miles to cover each day by horseback, with uncertain lodging along the way, the pilgrims to The Liturgy of Light had as many, and more, sites of early Gothic Cathedrals to visit as they had days to stay in France, had their own motor coach and driver to take them, and a peaceful and spacious home to return to each afternoon.  

 

The Chateau d'Ermenonville, in the Valley d'Oise just north of Paris, our home away from home, proved perfect for rest and quiet after the movement, stimulation, color, art, ideas, history into which we had been immersed since early morning. Perfect, also, for our common gathering at cocktail time each evening for "class," during which the pilgrims shared personal impressions of the day and were immersed again into the medieval sensibility through taking the parts of colorful characters of the time in plays related directly to the cathedral sites next to be visited.

 

Thus, attendees "became"  Abelard, Heloise, Jeanne d'Arc, Charles VII, Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot Suger. Evenings prepared for mornings, for visiting such sites as the Abbey Church of St. Denis, where Abbot Suger intended this first accomplished Gothic structure to open the walls to the "resplendent light spilling through the luminous windows."  

 

Such sites were visited as Laon, its Cathedral of Notre Dame, with its seven towers, and their charming sculptures of oxen, topping this small mountain of a medieval town rising out of the French countryside.

 

As Reims, the sacred coronation site for all legitimate French kings, where Jeanne d'Arc, herself, placed the crown on the Dauphine's head.

 

As Amiens, looming larger and rising higher than the royal Reims, the result of one master builder's perfect planning, working hand in hand with a refined understanding of building techniques and producing a marvel of any age.

 

As the Cathedral of Beauvais, whose crossing tower suffered a spectacular collapse and, thus, has represented the overreaching of man's ambition, so much a part of the Gothic experiment.

 

That virtually all of the very early Gothic Cathedrals rose up in a circle within 50 miles of Paris, like a circle of mushrooms, made it possible to have that central home from which to ray out to visit the sites each day, and this is what the pilgrims did for the first eight days from the Chateau d'Ermenonville, visiting the sites to the north. 

 

For the remaining four days, they stayed in a hotel in Paris in the medieval quarter of St. Germain-des-Pres, within walking distance of  Notre Dame de Paris, museums, and other Paris pleasures, taking day trips by the same motor coach to sites south of Paris, such as the Basilica of St. Madeleine at Vezelay.

 

It was from Paris that the highpoint of The Liturgy of Light was reached. For the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Chartres, inspired to be rebuilt, by the people, for Mary, after the precious relic of her tunic miraculously survived the disastrous fire of 1194, remains as a towering hall of worship, intact, for pilgrims to experience. And they do experience this sacred space, its hallowed grandeur, its endless stories in the carved stone and, especially, in the mysteriously glowing blue glass, and, thus, embrace a kinship with the medieval spirit. 

 

We 21st century pilgrims, toward the end of our journey, were reminded of our kinship with Chaucer's pilgrims when we visited the Cathedral of Sens, for there, beautifully told in panels of a stained-glass window of the period, was the life story and martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket. St. Thomas had taken refuge in the Cathedral at Sens when he was exiled by his king. It was shortly after he returned to England that that king said the words to his knights that cost him his life, and so made the Canterbury Cathedral a passionately popular pilgrimage sight.