I must admit, I'm an Episcopal snob. I grew up in the Roman Catholic church, and it always seemed so dead. Our peaked little church in the town I grew up was always out of money, and if the sermons weren't badgering the congregation to give more, they were sermons guilting us in some way or another, or lamenting why so few young men wanted to pursue the priesthood. There was no choir; the music seemed lifeless. They did try to liven it up with a a folk/rock band occasionally (my middle school music teacher was one of the musicians), but it never resonated with me. Yes, there were flashes of inspiration every once in while; I remember one particularly good assistant priest who was at the church for a year or two, but the Pope deemed him to be more valuable to the Catholic church in another parish. For his replacement, I think we got the former librarian from the Diocesan offices in Rochester. Nice guy, but not exactly engaging to a somewhat contrarian and questioning teenager. When I went away to school, I was ready to shake the dust of the Catholic church, and all churches, off of my feet. Instead I decided to worship the god of science and technology. It was a perfectly fulfilling god for a little while.
But after I graduated and entered the working world I became very much spiritually lost. I was living alone, didn't have a lot of close friends, and my career path at work and my life in general didn't seem to be going anywhere. My saving grace was the appearance of the woman who would eventually become my wife. When it was time for us to marry, she dragged me kicking and screaming to the local Episcopal Church, Christ Church in Redondo Beach, California. Not fully understanding what had just happened, I had no use for a church, but agreed to tolerate it because I knew I was enough of a traditionalist that I wanted to get married in some kind of church. At Christ Church, over the space of a few Sundays, my heart softened, and I found around me things that had been missing for years. For one there was community; people like my wife and me, young couples getting started on their life journeys. There was a spiritual existence, meaningful discourse, and of course beautiful music. I was blown away when I learned more about the workings of the Episcopal Church. You mean the congregation gets to choose their own clergy? And the Diocese elects its own Bishop? They have conventions where they discuss and debate issues central and some not so central to the life of the church. Scripture, tradition, reason - great values that speak to the balance that is so vital to a meaningful life. I was sold. This is what Church was meant to be.
So over the years, moving from California to New Hampshire, and continuing my involvement with the Episcopal Church, I became convinced that the Episcopalians got it right. Don't get me wrong; I firmly believe there are many spiritual disciplines, and all are a path to God for those that practice them. As I said in an earlier post, you can't convince me that billions of Muslims or Hindus or Buddhists are fundamentally wrong. But, I still had this sense that the Episcopal faith was somehow better, perhaps more meaningful, providing a more real glimpse of God than those others. The few times that I worshipped outside of the Episcopal Church reinforced that perception. Particularly the times I was in a Catholic church. But that was because that was what i wanted to see; if you put on yellow sunglasses, guess what? The whole world is going to look yellow. Yep, the Catholic church was still dead. And my perception of the virtues of the Episcopal Church was reinforced by the other places I visited in Episcopaldom. In visiting places like the National Cathedral in Washington DC, or the Cathedral in Portland, Maine on Christmas Eve, or having the privilege of worshiping with our Bishop, Gene Robinson, and of course being at my wonderful home church in Goffstown, I saw the great aliveness of this church. In fact, experiences like these were the motivation for the Episcopal Bike Project that this blog is chronicling.
So, it was with not some small amount of reluctance that I agreed to go to a Catholic service this past Sunday. This time it was at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. We went out to LA for the long weekend to get away and visit some very dear old friends. They had invited us to go with them to downtown LA on Sunday, first to go to church at the Cathedral, then get some lunch at a delightful outdoor restaurant, followed by a LA Philharmonic concert at the magnificent Walt Disney Concert Hall. It seemed like a great plan, except I wasn't too crazy about Catholic church. My preference would have been go back to Christ Church, and perhaps bump into some of our former contingent from years ago. But, this time, partly at Sarah's urging, I kept an open mind and went along with the plan. It was magnificent. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is very new, completed in 2003, and very modern. It is huge, seating several thousand, and is beautiful in design and construction. When we walked in we heard the choir warming up and practicing the John Rutter setting of the 23rd psalm. It is a contemporary piece of music and not something I expected to hear in a Catholic church. The choir sounded great and the organ was simply unbelievable. A cantor came out before the service and taught the congregation some new service music. He was a terrific musician as well. The opening hymn was one very familiar to me, straight out of the 1982 Hymnal. So far, so good, definitely not the Catholic church of my youth. But, the highlight of the service was the sermon, given by Monsignor Kevin Kostelnik. I'll spare you the details, because this blog entry is getting too long as it is, but it was uplifting, educational, and personal. He delivered it extremely well, moving in and amongst the congregation, not reading dryly from a pulpit (like I have experienced in more than a few Episcopal services). The most salient point was related to the Gospel that we had just heard, the story of the King who held a banquet but whose guests refused to come. Monsignor Kevin reminded us that we are invited to the banquet every day, and all we have to do is recognize the invitation. In fact it is our imperative to recognize the invitation; the banquet is all around us all the time. It was very apropos, since the invitation to this particular banquet I would have turned down if it had been left to my own devices. In the twenty plus years since Sarah dragged me kicking and screaming to Christ Church there have been a handful of services that I have been to that have been deeply moving and are etched in my spiritual memory. This past Sunday will almost certainly be one of them, and it wasn't even in an Episcopal Church.
p.s. - if you are ever in the Los Angeles area on a Sunday, I highly recommend a visit to The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels:. After service, go take a look at the organ console, the altar, the crucifix, and the tapestries. If you are lucky like we were, you might get an impromptu tour from a docent who sings in the choir.
p.p.s - I also highly recommend a concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. It is a surreal Frank Gehry building, beautiful in design and construction and with phenomenal acoustics. We were sitting in the back of the second balcony and we could hear the soloist like she was 10 feet away.
p.p.p.s - yes, I am behind on a few entries from previous Sundays. They are not forgotten and are in the works.
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