Flag Day

Here I am at our summer cottage in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, on June 14 and you would hardly know that it’s Flag Day. I haven’t seen a flag (at least to notice) all day. We’re here to get a small break from the city, but also to check in at my mother’s house so we don’t lose momentum in the cleanout.

When I’m not doing needed tasks, like mowing the lawn or burning brush, my main activity these days is editing the 1728 Dunciad. The other day I posted Book II and the notes (the notes are still in draft form) and now I am working on Book III.

When I was working on Book II, I noticed that Pope mentioned Bishop Benjamin Hoadley. A sermon Bishop Hoadley preached in 1717 before King George I prompted the Bangorian Controversy (Hoadley was Bishop of Bangor at the time) which was essentially about authority, doctrine, and polity in the Church of England and resulted in Convocation (the predecessor of General Synod) not meeting from 1717 to 1852 (because polity – the this case the royal prerogative – trumped.) Controversy among Anglicans has quite a history. I wish I knew more about the Bangorian Cntroversy.

While I am still wholly committed to my Dunciad project, as well as trying to keep up with Anglican and Episcopal developments, not to mention dealing with my mother’s estate, I am also tempted to get reinvolved as a beta tester for TMG (The Master Genealogist.) It was here at Heart Lake that I wrote the bulk of my two chapters of Getting the Most Out of The Master Genealogist. There is beta testing to do, but I don’t know whether I will be able to find the time to actually do any. Maybe I can be lightly involved for a while.

Eggplant

Next Tuesday, the singing group Howl (from Howl for vexation of spirit) is performing in the context of an evensong at St. Mary’s. We are doing two world premieres: A Blues Introit for Pentecost, by our director, Jonathan David, and God’s Grandeur by Ishmael Wallace, to a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The Blues Introit is a setting of a short poem by David Craig:
Pentecost:
Who is this Holy Spirit,
And what is He doing in the eggplant?

I haven’t practiced enough, but I expect to have a chance before the dress rehearsal Monday.

June 6 Update

Well, today I finally published the first part of my Dunciad project on the web. A brief account of what I have done can be found at my Dunciad blog. So far I have published Book I of the 1728 Dunciad at my Dunciad page, part of my Geocities site.

It’s nearly two weeks since I last posted here. In these two weeks, Liz and I have spent two weekends at Heart Lake. The first one was Memorial Day weekend and, partly because we were exhausted, we missed church on Pentecost. This past weekend, we went to the Heart Lake United Methodist Church, which has become our summer church home. There were twelve regular attenders there this week – along with another summer couple, Liz and I swelled the attendance by a third to sixteen. Since their organist died last year, one of their faithful members has been playing the hymns on the piano, but even though she is very musical, she is not a very fluent pianist, and so she is always glad when Liz shows up. On Sunday, as she did all last summer, Liz played. The appreciation we (especially Liz) get for being there makes us want to be there as many Sundays as we can. We won’t be there this week, and next week (Father’s Day) we have a hard choice to make. The pastor, Joyce Allen, who has been there for five years will be moving on to nearby Windsor, NY, and the Heart Lake church is holding a special goodbye breakfast for her. Meanwhile, it is Father’s Day and as the senior man at St. Mary’s, I feel a call to be here in New York. I don’t know what we’re going to decide.

I almost forgot -- we also attended a talk at 815 Second Avenue at which the Rt Revd Christopher Epting, the Presiding Bishop's deputy for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations, the Revd Canon Dr. J. Robert Wright of General Theological Seminary, and the Rt Revd Stephen Platten, Chairman of the Anglican Centre in Rome's Governors and Bishop of Wakefield, discussed some of the differences between the Church of England and the (US) Episcopal Church. I may later report on some of the interesting things I heard.

IN MEMORIAM

Two recent deaths caught my eye. John Macquarrie, the noted Anglican theologian, was a member of St. Mary’s when he was teaching at Union Theological Seminary up the hill from us. He was confirmed in the Episcopal Church at St. Mary’s and he served on the vestry until he was ordained deacon. He left St. Mary’s (and Union) to teach theology at Oxford.

The other was former New York State Senator Warren M. Anderson, of my home town, Binghamton, NY. He was very important in New York State politics for decades. Here is the obituary from the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin. (When I was a kid, there were the Binghamton Press in the afternoon, the Binghamton Sun in the morning, and the Endicott Bulletin.)

None of Warren Anderson’s obituaries noted that he was my mother's first boyfriend and she was his first girlfriend (when they were in Junior High School.)
“Andy” attended my mother’s funeral on May 5 and himself died four weeks later on June 1. This picture shows "Andy" (left) and my uncle Chuck Brink after the funeral.

ANGLICAN STUFF

The long march, first to September 30th and then on to Lambeth continues. I just followed a link at Father Jake's and signed a petition to Archbishop Rowan Williams at Soulforce asking the ABC to invite Gene Robinson to Lambeth. Meanwhile, the MadPriest of High Heaton reports on his flying trip to Rome and Grandmère Mimi tells us of going to the movies and of working in the movies, neither of which has much to do with Anglicanism.

I’m going back to my editing of the Dunciad.