Tag: christian formation

Frances Jane (Fanny) Van Alstyne Crosby, Hymnwriter, 1915

Annually on February 11th we remember Fanny Crosby. Read on.

Fanny Crosby was the most prolific writer of hymn texts and gospel songs in the American evangelical tradition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She wrote more than eight thousand sacred texts in addition to other poetry.

Frances Jane Crosby was born in Putnam County, New York, on March 24, 1820. Although not born blind, she lost her sight as an infant as a result of complications from a childhood illness. At the age of fifteen, she entered the New York Institute for the Blind where she would later teach for a number of years. In 1858, she married Alexander van Alstyne, a musician in New York who was also blind. Crosby was a lifelong Methodist.

Crosby’s texts were so popular that nearly every well-known composer of gospel music of the period came to her for words to accompany their melodies. In most hymn writing, the words come first and then a composer sets them to music, but for Crosby the words came so quickly and naturally that composers would often take her their tunes and she would immediately begin to shape words that fit the music.

Perhaps the best example of this process led to the creation of Crosby’s most well known hymn Blessed Assurance. On a visit to the home of a friend, the composer Phoebe Knapp, a newly composed tune was played for Crosby. After listening to the tune several times, the text began to take shape, and in a very short time one of the world’s most popular gospel hymns was born. The American gospel song is a unique genre of sacred music that combines words expressive of the personal faith and witness with tunes that are simple and easily learned. Fanny Crosby’s contribution to this genre is unequaled. Dozens of her hymns continue to find a place in the hymnals of Protestant evangelicalism around the world.

Fanny Crosby died on February 12, 1915, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where she is buried.

Source: A Great Cloud of Witnesses, 2018

If I had a choice, I would still choose to remain blind … for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Saviour.

Fanny Crosby on Christ Centered Quotes

Even more about Fanny Crosby

Additional resources you may enjoy as you walk with Fanny Crosby in the communion of saints …

Welcome to the Jesus Movement

Evangelism, Episcopal Church InitiativeThis is the Bulletin Insert for Sunday, January 29, 2017 (Epiphany 4A). Each week the Episcopal Church posts a Bulletin Insert online for sharing in all the churches.

The insert posted here announces Episcopal Church Revival Meetings in 2017-18. Imagine that! Read on. ~Fr. Dan

Begin quoteThe Episcopal Church is working with diocesan teams to organize a series of Episcopal Revivals in 2017 and 2018, six major events that promise to stir and renew hearts for Jesus, to equip Episcopalians as evangelists, and to welcome people who aren’t part of a church to join the Jesus Movement.

“I love the surprised response when people hear we’re organizing Episcopal Revivals,” said the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, the presiding bishop’s canon for evangelism, reconciliation and stewardship of creation. “Why wouldn’t we? A revival is a movement of the Spirit among the people of God, a concrete sign that we want to share God’s love out loud with each other and with new people. That sounds like the Jesus Movement.”

Read on, there’s more

What a homeless man taught me on Christmas morning

The original post appeared on The Messy Middle, January 4, 2017

When we truly “seek and serve Christ in all persons,” (see the Book of Common Prayer, 305) when we behave in a way that reveals we truly “love our neighbor as ourselves,” we open ourselves to the Christ meeting us and teaching us in ways we never expected. This is a story to make that point for you and me.

Continue reading “What a homeless man taught me on Christmas morning”

More on the Bay Psalm Book

Bay Psalm Book, 1640 | Image via RNS(RNS) Three hundred and seventy-three years ago, when the chief Puritan “divines” of the young Massachusetts Bay Colony printed their own translation of the Bible’s Book of Psalms, they prided themselves on importing the continent’s very first English printing press and establishing the colony as a cultural and educational center.

What they were certainly not anticipating — the little books sold for 20 pence apiece — was that next Tuesday (Nov. 26), Sotheby’s will be auctioning off one of the 11 surviving copies of the Bay Psalter for between $10 and $30 million dollars. In that expected price range, it will be the most expensive book ever sold in public.

Read the entire post here: En route to Sotheby\’s, Bay Psalm Book traces nation\’s seesaw religious history | Religion News Service.

Earlier we shared a post from the NY Times. Here is another perspective provided by Religion News Service (RNS). The auction is Tuesday, November 26, 2013.

As both articles implied the congregation, Old South Church in Boston, was divided about selling this copy. I am reminded of the conversations I’ve had about the Roman Catholic Church selling some (many?) of its Vatican treasures in order to fund service to the poor, outcast, marginalized, and oppressed. It seems this is the purpose (funding service ministries) being pursued by the Old South Church congregation. What are your thoughts about this?

Image: via RNS

Look again/anew at Paul

2013-1014-paul-amongWhat’s the connection between St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and the second-century Roman novelist Apuleius’s comedy The Golden Ass? More than you might think, says classicist Sarah Ruden in her book Paul Among the People (Image). Ruden, who specializes in ancient Greek and Roman literature, became interested in the preconceptions modern readers bring to Paul’s writing when she began studying the apostle herself. –

Read the interview in US Catholic

We shared the link to the interview on our Facebook Page. Now we share it here. Read the article. Share what you think. Keep the conversation going.

Wind Chimes: 3 September 2013

candle001

Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I light my prayer candle today for those who seek to ‘wage peace.’ Join me in helping the peacemakers in this and every nation, especially in Syria, have the “courage to will and persevere” in their efforts and be acclaimed “blessed” by God and by their neighbors (you and me). ~daniel rondeau

DivLine360x12“Blessed are the peacemakers,” “they are children of God,”
this is the song of the chimes today.
What do you hear?

The prayer, “Attributed to St. Francis,” may be found in the (Episcopal) Book of Common Prayer on page 833.

Wind Chimes: 29 August 2013

divergent-paths

“It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path,
but it’s another to think yours is the only path.”

A Facebook Post by
Spirituality & Practice

This quote reminded me to re-read a post made by a new desert friend, Paul Kowalewski, who posts regularly on The Desert Retreat House. Paul’s post Buddha Christ spoke about his journey on ‘the way.’ He tells people now that he is a “Christian Buddhist.”

“The disciple is to walk on a path leading to the discovery of one’s own ‘Buddha nature,’ one’s own ‘Christ nature'” according to Paul (and I agree).

And what does this “way” look like?

Do unto others as you would have them do to you. (Jesus)
Consider others as yourself. (Buddha)

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. (Jesus)
If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon any desires and utter no evil words. (Buddha)

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Jesus)
Hatreds do not ever cease in this world by hating, but by love. (Buddha)

Just as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me. (Jesus)
Whoever would tend me, he should tend the sick. (Buddha)

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own. (Jesus)
The faults of others are easier to see than your own. (Buddha)

Go. Read Paul’s post, Buddha Christ. On your journey: who has walked with you? Who has taught you? Who has enkindled faith, hope, and love as you make your way home?

DivLine360x12No one owns the sounds of the chimes, they simply dance with the wind and play, delighting those who pause to listen.
What do you hear?

Wind Chimes: 27 August 2013

For us Christians, healing and liberation are inexorably tied together. For Jesus, healing is always an act of liberation. For his followers, liberation for some involves healing for all.

Gary Hall
Dean of the National Cathedral

In his sermon on Sunday, August 25, 2013, (The Very Rev.) Gary Hall addressed his congregation and everyone of goodwill who has ears to hear. Anticipating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington by those involved in the Civil Rights Movement, Gary not only asked us to take a closer look at our lukewarm response to civil rights but promised, as Dean of the Cathedral, to lead the way to more liberating/healing actions by and with the staff and people of the National Cathedral

…let us not delude ourselves. The Episcopal Church, as a denomination, participated in both overt and tacit segregation. Today 86.7% of American Episcopalians are white. The Washington National Cathedral staff, congregation, and chapter are overwhelmingly white. We are at once the cathedral church for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and the most visible faith community in the nation’s capital. Yet we have a largely non-existent record of involvement or investment in the other three quadrants of the District of Columbia. How can we, with integrity, presume to “speak truth to power” about racial justice when we are, in fact, implicated in the very structures of injustice? How can we call others into righteousness when we are ourselves caught in a web of sin?.

Weaving together the text from Jeremiah 1:4-10, the text from Luke 13:10-17, a text from Matthew (Mt 7:1-5) about judging, eyes, and specks, and logs, and the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1963, Gary summarized and then made a pledge:

Friends, what we have here is a very big log in our eyes. Our problem is not the racism of any one individual, because racism is not only personal. It is also interpersonal, institutional, and social. This fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s speech and the march that occasioned it demands that we take an inventory of ourselves yes personally, but also interpersonally, institutionally, and socially. What does it mean to belong to an 86% white denomination when, by 2040, there will be no one majority race or ethnic group in America? What does it mean to call ourselves the “National” Cathedral when we confine our ministry to the whitest and most privileged quadrant of the District of Columbia? How can we live into the dream articulated by Dr. King when the evils we face in 2013 are so much more insidious than they were in 1963? The enemy back then looked and acted like Lester Maddox and Bull Connor. The enemy today looks and acts very much like you and me.

We here can do little to nothing about the Supreme Court, the Florida legislature, our own Congress. We can, however, together look to ourselves. On behalf of Washington National Cathedral, I pledge today to initiate a process of cathedral self-examination, renewal, and reform, seeking to explore the racism inherent in our worship, ministry, staffing, and governance. Read Gary Hall’s Sermon of August 25, 2013

I invite you to read his sermon. Listen carefully for the Spirit, the same Spirit involved in the call of Jeremiah, the healing moment in the life of the unnamed woman healed by Jesus long ago, and the words and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Spirit is not done speaking and not done working with folks like you and me.

DivLine360x12“Healing, freedom, liberation” are the sounds ringing from the chimes today.
What do you hear?

Wind Chimes: 19 August 2013

Brothers, I ask you to bear with this message of encouragement … .

Hebrews 13:22
New American Bible Revised Edition

We have been reading in the Letter to the Hebrews the past few Sundays (in August 2013). The author calls his work a “message of encouragement” (other translations use “my word of exhortation”). Whether a message of encouragement or a word of exhortation the author clearly wants to support and affirm and challenge his hearers to keep their focus on Jesus (see Hebrews 12:1-2) and move forward into an uncertain and uncontrollable future as did our ancestors in the faith: with trust in God who over time has proven to be trustworthy.

Of course, this encouragement, or exhortation, is also a word worth hearing in our day. Highlighting the seriousness of this ancient encouragement and our modern situation is this word from the former Archbishop of Canterbury:

‘Persecuted’ British Christians need to ‘grow up’, says former Archbishop Rowan Williams. Christians complaining of persecution in Britain need to “grow up”, the former Archbishop of Canterbury has said, as he argues feeling “mildly uncomfortable” is not comparable to real suffering elsewhere.

Read the entire post in The Telegraph (Aug. 15, 2013)

Further illuminating his words are reports and stories of the burning of churches in Egypt, Christians living in caves and fear on the border between Sudan and South Sudan, the difficult lives of Palestinian Christians in the Gaza Strip, the very uncertain future of Christians in Syria, and the tenuous circumstances of Christians in China. These are life and death situations and the response of faith may indeed be difficult and the discouragement that anything can change for the better must be overwhelming at times. To these Christians the words of the author of Hebrews must come like a balm to heal and make strong and give hope.

So, to be verbally abused in England or in the United States for being Christian; even to be ridiculed for trust in God (when evil and painful situations abound) or to receive the vehement incredulity and head-shaking dismissal from those who conclude that there is no God is minor by comparison (just ask Rowan Williams, or me). Yet, such is our situation and the author of Hebrews speaks to our situation, too (seen in its proper global perspective, of course).

What are your struggles and how is the ancient word in the Letters to the Hebrews a word of encouragement? How might we “be with” our brothers and sisters in Christ whose persecution, whose situation, is far more pressing, and even life-threatening? Leave a comment and continue the conversation.

DivLine360x12“Stay with it, stay with it” is the song of the chimes today.
What do you hear?

Wind Chimes: 15 August 2013

I will listen to what the LORD God is saying, *
for he is speaking peace to his faithful people
and to those who turn their hearts to him.

Psalm 85:8
in the Book of Common Prayer

Memorial Marker for Jonathan M. Daniels
Memorial Marker for Jonathan Myrick Daniels in Hayneville, AL

Yesterday, August 14th, the Episcopal Church remembered Jonathan Myrick Daniels, a seminarian killed in Alabama during the Civil Rights marches in 1965. Jonathan struggled with God’s call. He wondered to what (kind of ministry, place of ministry, people to serve with) God was calling him. He returned to seminary:

Conviction of his calling [to ordained ministry] was deepened at Evening Prayer during the singing of the Magnificat: “ ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things.’ I knew that I must go to Selma. The Virgin’s song was to grow more and more dear to me in the weeks ahead.”

Today, August 15th, the Episcopal Church commemorates Saint Mary the Virgin (a Holy Day in the Episcopal Church celebrated every August 15th). Together, her “Yes” to God and Jonathan’s “Yes” to God have the power to inspire our own “Yes” to God. What an amazing mystery it is to share God’s story in our own lives, even as Mary and, much later, Jonathan did.

DivLine360x12“Yes” the chimes sound; “Yes” again and again
What do you hear?

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