Saint James Newsletter
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Saint James the Great Anglican Church Smiths Station, Alabama A Mission of the Anglican Province of America Fr John Klein can be reached at (334) 663-2985 / [email protected] Newsletter #42 - September 2019 Traditional, orthodox Anglicanism – Catholic and Evangelical – for modern people. Look what is coming as a gift from Andrea Granger, Senior Warden of Saint Matthias' Dothan. We are going to have our youngest members, a few slightly older ones too, ringing hand bells. Some words from the Vicar: In August we began studying Bonnell Spencer's Ye Are The Body at the Sunday morning coffee-hour class. Wednesday evenings we meet at 6:00 PM (EDT) for Mass, followed by supper at Pizza D'Action, then a study of Bishop Kenneth Myers' fabulous book The Garden of Happiness: Cultivating True and Lasting Happiness in Life. If you have a friend constantly coping with a lack of joy and fulfillment, please bring them. They certainly don't have to be Anglican or even Christian. Of course, we will do our best to make them both. Don't miss Saint George's English Tea on September 28. See the advertisement below. The next Quiet Day is scheduled for Saturday December 7 with the theme of the Incarnation and the Blessed Virgin Mary's role in it. See the article below. Holy Land on Pilgrimage in February 2020 (see the article below). If it is at all possible for you to do so, you will never regret your decision to be a pilgrim. Walking in the footsteps of Christ is indescribable, something beyond measure, it approaches the mystical. The Workers' Appreciation Luncheon is set for Friday, September 20 at noon (CDT). Merrie Lee Lockwood is in charge and all of the skilled artisans who worked on the conversion of our church building from a domestic house are invited. And, please see Bishop Chad's Appeal for Volunteers at the January 2020 Synod below. Χρ Recently, I wrote to the churchwardens at Saint James and Saint Matthias with these words: Dear Churchwardens Sandra and Andrea, and Bishop Grundorf and Bishop Coadjutor Chad, Linda and I have decided we need a vacation. Where else but Spain and then trans-Atlantic back home. We will go a day early in order to spend a one day pilgrimage at the ninth century Monastery of Montserrat. On the day of departure we go for yet one more time to pray at La Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona. Then on November 17, our twelfth wedding anniversary, we board the Sky Princess, with a balcony room and traditional dining, from Barcelona bound for Fort Lauderdale. On the way we make five stops (Valencia, Malaga, Cadiz for Seville, Lisbon, and Madeira), three of the most exciting stops are the Cathedral in Sevilla, Lisbon Portugal, and the Island of Madeira. We fly back to Atlanta from Ft. Lauderdale, pick up the truck, and return to Parson's Pound and Sweet Home Alabama. Linda certainly needs a holiday and she assures me that I do too. We are excited. It will be the first real vacation without work in about four years. If you count the Camino a vacation, then three years for me and four for Linda. This puts us out of my two congregations for three Sundays - from November 15- December 2. I will be seeing what we can do vis-à-vis supply priests and layreaders. I can write sermons to be read and our Wednesday evening can become Evening Prayer, supper, and Bible Study. (Subsequently, Bishop Chad is attempting to secure the ministry of deacons to assist us on Sundays with St. Matthias coming up to join Saint James). I am hoping to pull together a rotating, annual Advent (or Christmas) Lessons and Carols with all of the Anglican Churches in the region. We could start this Advent 2019 at Saint James, next St. George's, Columbus, St. Andrew's, West Point, Good Shepherd, Opelika, St. Matthias' Dothan, and so on. I am working on this as I write to you. The cooperation between these churches is simply soaring. You remember how really bad it was when we started three years ago. Well it is nearly all peace, harmony, and mission today. Thanks be to God. This cooperation makes emergency response and pastoral care far easier. Next year 2020 I will with Bishop Chad lead the 2020 APA Holy Land Pilgrimage. Priests are being sent by their parishes, laymen and women from all over the diocese are calling to enquire about it, advertising is going great. I think it looks like a great venture moving forward. In Eastertide 2020, God-willing, Fr. Steve Sommerrock and I are exploring walking the Camino de Santiago. It will be his first time and my fifth. Buen Camino. In October 13-16, 2020 I hope to go to the Societas Sanctae Crucis (SSC) International Synod in London. Then Linda and I will go for several days in the countryside, first to Shottesbrooke Manor, Berkshire where the English Nonjurors formed a safe-haven and flourished. It's in my dissertation and I recently sent a second article - "Francis Cherry, Patronage, and the Shottesbrooke Nonjurors" - to Anglican and Episcopal History. AEH just last month published my: "Susanna Hopton and Mary Astell: Two Women Spiritual Writers among the English Nonjurors." This will be a thrill for me and I hope to write about worship in the manor house versus the parish church. Then Linda would like to go to Gloucestershire via Oxford to see where I once served at St. John the Evangelist, Churchdown, Gloucestershire. We will only be gone a week - one Sunday away probably. As for Saint James the Great and Saint Matthias we are working together so well that the synergetic effect has been tremendous. The Quiet Days that we are doing three times a year at Blessed Trinity Shrine Retreat Center near Fort Mitchell, AL are drawing people from the surrounding Anglican parishes. The next one on December 7th - eve of the Conception of the BVM - will have Sister Gail M.S.B.T. and me giving the meditations and attendees from all the churches present. We expect thirty people. We are working to build up the APA and doing a great job there, but we are struggling with getting new members. It's not for want of trying. This brief report is to catch you up on progress and plans thus far. All goes well. Pray for us. Yours in XP, John+ One Man’s Spiritual Journey along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela A Lecture at Saint James the Great Anglican Church, Smiths Station, Alabama on Friday, October 4th, St. Francis Day, at 7:00 PM (EDT). There is no charge. RSVP to Fr. John Klein at (334) 663-298 or [email protected]. Coffee and Dessert will be served. On Ash Wednesday, March 1, 2006, The Rev. John William Klein, then a priest in the Episcopal Church - he is now in the Anglican Province of America - began walking the five hundred miles from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees to the shrine of St. James the Great in northwestern Spain. His recent retirement prompted many questions about identity and the way ahead. Thus, walking The Way – El Camino de Santiago de Compostela – seemed the logical thing to do and a time for reflection and decision. The plan was to arrive in Santiago by Palm Sunday, which he did. Along the Way he met many other pilgrims, all of whom had brought their own stories. All were seeking answers, direction, strength, forgiveness, and sometimes healing. This lecture portrays one man’s journey – a journey he repeated subsequently thrice more and plans to attempt a fourth time in April 2020 – but a journey with others, all linked to countless pilgrims over a thousand years of pilgrimage. Arguably, most pilgrims to Santiago come with what they think are their particular reasons for walking The Way. Most end their journey only to discover that the presenting problem was not the real problem. The end, much like in T.S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding,” is actually the beginning. The journey is the destination. Fr. Klein reached the place from which he could see Santiago and realized he did not want the journey to end. By that point, he (who had started very much alone in the cold and snow of the Pyrenees) had walked across the whole of Spain, and was finishing with three companions from Vienna, French Canada, and Barcelona. The individual story had been intertwined with the stories of other pilgrims along the Camino. This is the story of how such pilgrimage changes lives. Walking and praying are the pilgrim’s work, by so doing the interior and outer dimensions of one's life are synchronized. Private and corporate also come into focus as one becomes part of a sojourning company of fellow travelers. The harmony of earth, air, fire, and water – virtual daily companions - also becomes much closer. In the end, a simpler daily routine, with humbler objectives, enables one to meditate deeply on a life-transforming trajectory that prioritizes that which is truly, personally important. Some Famous Pilgrims to Santiago Gotescalco, Archbishop of Le Puy (c. 950 AD). Aimery Picaud (c. 1140 AD) who wrote the first Guide to the Camino. El Cid (c. 1043-1099) St. Francis of Assisi, friar, 1226. Ferdinand (d. 1516) and Isabella (d. 1504) Dante (c. 1265-1321), possibly? Chaucer (c. 1343-1400), possibly? Shirley MacLaine, author of The Camino, walked the Camino in 1994.