St. Barnabas' Shrine Mont Weekend

St. Barnabas' Retreat Weekend at Shrine Mont was a great success: there were more parishioners at church in Shrine Mont than there were left in Annandale!

 Our church's growing children's community was well-represented. In addition to organized crafts (gorgeous Jesus Loves Me flower pots), stories, songs, and dances, the children also had a fair amount of play time to strengthen their relationships with each other.





The older children's level of enthusiasm was particularly notable. They helped take responsibility for the younger ones, acting as great guides and buddies.

Shuffleboard!

Excavation lesson.

Somebody give these guys something to do. Seriously. ;)

Our time together was well-organized and well-spent, focusing on the ways that we feed our souls and feed our communities. The presentations were 100% put on by our own parishioners. We frequently broke out into groups, which provided fantastic opportunities to get to know people we might not otherwise have known. Although we're a small church, we're growing. I would venture to guess that everyone there met someone new over the weekend.

The music was great fun! This picture doesn't do it justice. Songs ranged from traditional and spiritual to campy and fun. Whatever the mood of our lesson and work, Beth had a song to enhance it. Awesome.

At one point several families with kids decided to take advantage of Shrine Mont's labyrinth. For the little ones it was a puzzle and an exercise in patience.

 Labyrinths are amazing, aren't they? Even without anyone saying so, the young ones quickly get to a place where they recognize it's a space for reflection. The Spirit at work.

 Getting out in nature is an important part of the Shrine Mont experience, and luckily the weather cooperated. Three parents and a random assortment of St. Barnabas' kids decided to hike the Cross Trail, which takes about 90 minutes and is suitable for kids.There were plenty of walking sticks to go around, tiny toads to be discovered, and a great view from the top of the trail.

Some of the other adults decided to do the longer and more challenging hike up North Mountain.

One of the most interactive tasks for us at the retreat was to identify the many ministries of the church and help the Portfolio Management Team help prioritize. Our work falls into four categories: Worship, In-reach, Outreach, and the Wider Church. Everyone was asked to place a pink dot next to the ministries they felt strongly enough to volunteer for, a green dot next next to the ones they felt were important but weren't directly involved in, and a yellow dot for the ones that were not as important. It was fascinating to see what our community agreed and disagreed on, and it was valuable to identify work that is seen as important but lacks a point-person. And it was most impressive indeed to put all our work into one chart. Considering our size, our good works sure are mighty! Those unable to join us at Shrine Mont are encouraged to participate in this activity. The poster is now in the hallway at St. Barnabas'.

These are just a few of the many memories made that weekend, and the important spiritual work done there on the individual, family, and church community levels. Please add Shrine Mont to your list of wonderful parts of the St. Barnabas' experience!

Sunday, October 13, 2013: The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday, October 13, 2013

The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

 

 

8:00 a.m.  Holy Eucharist

9:15 a.m.  Adult Choir Rehearsal – Choir Loft

9:15 a.m.  Christian Formation for All Ages

10:15 a.m.  Holy Eucharist & Children's Chapel

following the service  Children's Choir – Education Wing

 

We welcome as celebrant and preacher the Rev. Randall Prior.

Whenever you come to church, please bring a can of food for the food pantry. 

The need is great!

 

 

Please join us for

Children's Chapel

Godly Play

Children's Choir

Journey to Adulthood (Rite 13 & YAC)

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Trunk 'N Treat

 

October 27 @ 4:00 p.m.

 

 

St. Barnabas' Parking Lot

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Program Descriptions

Childcare -- for infants and toddlers, available from 9:00 through the end of the 10:15 service, in the Nursery in the Education Wing.

Godly Play -- for children ages 3 to 10, from 9:15 to 10:00 in the Education Wing. Godly Play is a Montessori-based Christian Education program, in which the children encounter and retell the stories of the Bible by acting them out with figures.
 
Children's Chapel -- for children ages 3 to 10, from 10:15 until the Peace, in the Education Wing. Children are invited to sit in the front pew at the beginning of the service, and to follow the crucifer out to Children's Chapel. Each Sunday there is a story and a craft. The children return to join their parents in time for Holy Eucharist.

Journey to Adulthood (J2A & YAC) -- for young adults from age 12 to 18, from 9:15 to 10:00 in the Library. Each week the young adults meet for games, conversation, and planning for service and mission projects.

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Join us at Vacation Bible School...An Epic Adventure Awaits!

New friends * Amazing experiments * Wild games * Lip-smacking snacks * Surprising adventures * Incredible music

Join Theresa Merchant and the rest of the St. Barnabas' crew for an epic adventure July 14-18, 2013 from 6:00 - 8:30 PM each day.

Enter the epic adventure that empowers kids to stand strong.  This week will feature material from Kingdom Rock that helps kids understand God's victorious power.  We'll do it through fun exercises, exciting games and lots of free food!

REGISTER ONLINE: https://www.groupvbspro.com/vbs/ez/StBarnabasVBS/gpgs/Home.aspx.

If you need additional material or would like to volunteer, please contact Theresa Merchant at theresawmerchant [AT] gmail.com. Or simply call the church office at 703.941.2922.

Listening Hearts: Grounding for Your Spiritual Strategic Plan

Saturday, May 18

St. Barnabas’ Episcopal Church,

4801 Ravensworth Road Annandale, VA 22003

9:30 AM-3 PM

Led by Suzanne Farnham, 

author of Listening Hearts—Discerning Call in Community

Hebrew and Christian tradition sees the heart as central to the body and the spirit.

“When we draw together with truly listening hearts, we enter into communion with one another and with God.” p. 2, Introduction of Listening Hearts.

In this day of reflection, we will explore ways to seek God’s guidance for us, not only as individuals, but also as a community of the body of Christ. 

You may want to read the book Listening Hearts, which outlines methods of discernment based on Anglican spirituality and Quaker practice. 

Lunch and nursery care will be provided.

Call St. Barnabas’ church office at 703-941-2922 to RSVP.

Emancipation - From Repentance to Hope

By the Rev. Linda Hawkins

Despite his resistance beforehand, our eight-year-old son remarked on the way home from church, “I’m glad I went tonight because I made a new friend.” He had met Alex, and from the start they were kindred spirits. Never did he articulate their common bond so obvious to the rest of us.

Both had sisters with Down Syndrome. For Alex, it was his twin sister, Annie. Two boys, one black, one white, living in radically different neighborhoods but each loving and defending a sister enslaved by disability. Two girls, one white, one black, together blossoming in a church that delighted in their giftedness when the larger world did not. The freedom and growth of one fed the freedom and growth of the other in the years ahead.

Around that time, my son learned about slavery as I read a children’s book about the underground railroad. He interrupted the story with an urgent question, “This is make believe, right? This didn’t really happen.” His disbelief continued later as the neighborhood of Alex and Annie deteriorated. He could not understand why their family just didn’t move. He could not fathom the continued shackles of slavery woven into our lives. He expected his friends to have the same freedom he enjoyed. As a young adult, the little black girl died of lack of proper health care—a testimony to the continued legacy of slavery among us.

Today we give thanks for emancipation, for the bold act of freeing those enslaved one hundred and fifty years ago. As a woman of my generation, I know even myself to be the beneficiary of that movement of freedom. Only as slaves were freed and civil rights granted did doors open for women as well. Despite the privileges I had in a white family, never would I have imagined as a little girl in South Carolina that someday I would be a priest in the church with women as my bishop and presiding bishop. After all, the vocational interest test that I took in high school only listed “Nun” as an option, and I for one flunked that category.

Yet we dare not forget that continued legacy of slavery in our midst. None of us is truly free unless all of us are free—whatever our race, disability, economic or educational status, language, gender, sexual orientation, or place of origin.

We will know the truth, and the truth will set us free. But truth must have hands and feet to set us all free. May we find again our childlike disbelief that any child of God could be the possession of another. May we join hands like Alex and Crawford, Annie and Ellen, that someday all God’s children might be free.

Family, Fellowship and Warmth at the Annual Shrove Tuesday Supper

Family, Fellowship and Warmth on Shrove Tuesday

by Librada Estrada

On February 12, St. Barnabas held its annual Shrove Tuesday pancake supper hosted by the Vestry. The day precedes the start of Lent and the 40 days of fasting involved in the season. Traditionally it involves eating pancakes to use up rich foods so that individuals eat simpler foods throughout Lent.

The conversation and sense of camaraderie that I had an opportunity to participate in and witness was a rich and unexpected experience.  As a new Vestry member, I originally thought I would attend, make pancakes, serve some food, attend the mass that evening and then be on my merry way.  The Vestry prepared the bacon in advance and then came together early in the afternoon to ready the Richardson room. As we organized the kitchen, the Vestry members shared stories from past Shrove Tuesday suppers, about the number of participants, funny occurrences, running out of a particular food item, etc. We identified that some of us were more talented at mixing the batter, others of us in flipping pancakes and some at pouring out just the right amount of mix to form a round pancake. While I worked in the kitchen, other congregation members involved my children in activities, and as the evening progressed, helped them with their supper, identified which noisemaker would be the “right” one to hold, and eventually guided them into the chapel for the Farewell to Alleluias mass.

What I experienced was a great reminder of the wonderful history and tradition associated with the pancake supper. I was reminded of preparing meals with my very large family in San Antonio, Texas. As several of us were in the kitchen, kids were running around, we had early arrivers coming in to nibble on a little something before we officially were ready to cook. I can imagine that many of us have witnessed this in our homes. Participating in the pancake supper was just a bit brighter and sharper because it connected me even more to the community of St. Barnabas and my family in a way that was positive and affirming.

Additionally, it brought home a topic that the Vestry had recently discussed. Our January retreat involved the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. We learned that individuals have different preferences for how they experience spirituality. For some, the preference is to follow tradition such as through prayer and mass, others prefer to discuss or debate liturgy, there are those who experience through building and serving the community and for others it involves helping others grow in their faith. All of those in attendance at the pancake supper and mass, regardless of their role, contributed to the spiritual growth of our community by creating an environment that allowed us to celebrate together the start of a new Lenten season. 

The Liturgy of Tenebrae

By Hugh Agnew and Ed Ing

The word 'tenebrae' is Latin for shadows.  The rubrics or instructions for this worship service explain that Tenebrae is an extended meditation on Jesus’ life from the Last Supper to the Resurrection. This is in keeping with the liturgical theme of Holy Week. Worship on Passion or Palm Sunday opens with the prayer: “Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Tenebrae worship service dates from the first millennium of the Western Church. It originally referred to the daily monastic services of Matins and Lauds as conducted on the last three days of Holy Week. The service utilized the assigned psalms. It also incorporated passages from the prophet Jeremiah, the early theologian Augustine of Hippo, and the Apostle Paul.

In the schedule of monastic worship, the last office of night has come to be called Matins. Lauds follows at daybreak. Tenebrae followed these parts of monastic worship. During the middle ages, the service was moved to the preceding day in the early evening. This made Tenebrae available for all to attend.

In the Episcopal Church the three days of Tenebrae devotionals can be consolidated into a single service on Wednesday evening before Maundy Thursday. Alternatively, the devotionals can still be divided over three evenings before Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. The preference is to have Tenebrae only on Holy Wednesday. This allows the focus to remain on the different liturgies for the following three days culminating in the Sunday of the Resurrection. 

Most parishes, however, dispense with Tenebrae due to the liturgical requirements of the three following days. Other parishes still observe Tenebrae service. The Episcopal Church’s liturgy for this service may be found at http://www.liturgies.net/Lent/Tenebrae.htm.

Tenebrae utilizes a special rite of light and darkness.  After each psalm and reading, one of 15 candles on the candelabrum is extinguished. The gradual and finally total darkness visualizes the apparent victory of death and evil in the crucifixion of God’s Son. At the end of the service, the last, central candle is returned to remind worshipers of Christ’s Resurrection and our redemption. To emphasize this, the concluding prayer of Tenebrae asks: “Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross.” This supplication is repeated on the liturgy for Good Friday.

On February 2, 2013, prior to the start of Lent, St. Barnabas’ will present a recital of the musical setting of the Tenebrae responses by the 16th century composer Carlo Gesualdo. Gesualdo, an Italian nobleman, represents the culmination of the tradition of Renaissance Italian madrigal composition as it moves into Mannerism and approaches the Baroque.  His unusual and highly personal musical language, with its striking chromatic shifts, stretched the limits of the musical taste of his time and sounds remarkably modern even today. Perhaps reflecting his own tortured personal life, Gesualdo’s style seems particularly suited for texts that contemplate anguish, loss, separation and suffering. These feelings are movingly expressed in his settings of the Tenebrae Responsories, chosen by the Countertop Ensemble for this musical recital. 

The performance by the Countertop Ensemble is in memory of Fr. Lowell Harlan, former curate of the parish. After service in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, Fr. Harlan took Holy Orders as a priest. He unstintingly served his Redeemer and the parish.

“Almighty God, we remember before you today your faithful servant Lowell; and we pray that, having opened to him the gates of larger life, you will receive him more and more into your joyful service, that, with all who have faithfully served you in the past, he may share in the eternal victory of Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”