20 May. The Rev. Pamela Werntz blessed the Babcock Doors to the Sargent Lobby at the rear of our sanctuary, where head usher Stephen Babcock welcomed congregants to our services for fseveral decades. Assisting her are subdeacon Karen King and the Rev. Robert Greiner, with Stephen facing his doors. Although our rector had lifted our mask mandate for the Covid pandemic earlier, vulnerable congregants and many of our musicians continued to wear them. See also: Timeline 1997.- May. Vaughan Sherrill joined us as Parish Administrator. She is a great-granddaughter of Henry Knox Sherrill, who was ninth bishop of our diocese, twentieth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, a founder of the Episcopal Church Foundation, and President of the World Council of Churches.
- Sept. Our rector became dean of our diocese’s Boston Harbor Deanery.
- 11 Dec. The Chorus of Emmanuel Music sang parishioner Sid Richardson’s Magnificat, which they had commissioned for Gaudete Sunday. Listen to it on our YouTube Channel.
- Our puppeteer Sara Peattie published on Amazon’s Kindle platform 68 Ways to Make Really Big Puppets.
Tag Archives: clergy
The Harvest of Righteousness
Advent 2C. 19 December 2021. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Baruch 5:1-9 Take off the garment of sorrow and affliction and put on the robe of righteousness.
Phillipians 1:31-11. And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God
Luke 3:1-6 All flesh shall see the salvation of God.
God all merciful and all compassionate, grant us the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may and cost what it will.
As I said last week, Advent is a season for communal and institutional reflection and repentance, for collective atonement and reparations. Our readings for this second Sunday in Advent are so full and big with calls for repentance and reparations; it is almost as if they are pregnant with possibility. The prophet Baruch and the evangelist Luke are both reminding their hearers about the words of the prophet Isaiah. And Luke draws a picture of John the Baptist that is just like the prophet Jeremiah, consecrated before he was born, and just like Elijah by the Jordan in the wilderness. Luke also has already explained that John’s work was so closely related to Jesus’s work, their purposes were so akin to one another, that it was as if they must have known one another before they were even born. Continue reading
2021
- 1 Jan. Orbis Books published When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community by our 11th rector, The Rev. Dr. William Blaine-Wallace.
- 21 Jan. Boston Sun article by Seth Daniel, “Made for This Time: Surprisingly Emmanuel Church Was Engineered for COVID-19”, discussed the efforts of Michael Scanlon and Julian Bullitt to monitor air quality throughout our building, which was designed in the time of tuberculosis.
- March. The Rev. Tamra Tucker and our rector formed two mixed groups of parishioners from common cathedral and Emmanuel to follow The Episcopal Church’s Sacred Ground dialogue series on race and faith.
- July 29. Kevin Neel retired as organist and parish administrator par excellence.
- 26 Sept. We celebrated the retirement of Pat Krol, who had served as Executive Director of Emmanuel Music and greeter since 2006. We funded the cantata and dedicated in her honor these doors, which she held open every Sunday while our choristers and liturgists to processed into the Sanctuary.
- 31 Oct.
Memorial service for The Rev. Dr. David J. Siegenthaler (1926-2020), former priest in charge, was held in our well-ventilated sanctuary. After leaving Emmanuel, Dr. Siegenthaler had served as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Duxbury MA, and then as archivist at the Episcopal Divinity School, where he taught for four decades.
2020
- March 7. 10th anniversary of our 12th rector’s installation. On its eve, we feasted with dinner, speeches, poetry, and song. Thanks to the efforts of our deacon The Rev. Robert Greiner, Mayor of Boston Martin J. Walsh proclaimed it Reverend Pamela L. Werntz Day. Pictured in the banner of this post are Pam Werntz, Amanda Grant-Rose, Rebekah Rodrigues, Joy Howard, Grace McElroy-Howard, Laura Simons, Bob Greiner, Rabbi Devon Lerner, Gennifer Sussman, The Rev. Tamra Tucker, and Jaylyn Olivo.
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The Rev. William Blaine-Wallace
June 28. Our 11th rector, the Rev. William Blaine-Wallace, read for Chapel Camp from his book When Tears Sing: The Art of Lament in Christian Community (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 2020).
- July. Before he left to study at Virginia Theological Seminary, our Candidate for Holy Orders Joshua Padraig (Paddy) Cavanaugh compiled a liturgical customary, an illustrated manual which is used by our Altar Guild in its preparations for services throughout the year.
- Oct. 21. Parish Operations Manager Kevin Neel set up our YouTube Channel and with video equipment bought by Emmanuel Music, Brad Dumont and Matt Griffing began to livestream our services.
- Nov. 1. A Saint for All Saints, a conference about the legacy of our own saint, Pauli Murray, organized by a committee led by Jr. Warden William Margraf, was held via Zoom. The Rev. Dr. Yolanda A. Rolle, Episcopal Chaplain of Howard University, whom we sponsored for the priesthood,
The Rev. Dr. Anna Pauline Murray
moderated a panel comprised of Assoc. Dean Melissa W. Bartholomew of Harvard Divinity School; the Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, rector of St. Aidan’s Church, San Francisco; and the Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Canon Theologian of the National Cathedral and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary. Please see our page for the program and more.
2018
Emmanuel House, home to a small intentional community, was created by the Charles River Episcopal Co-Housing Endeavor (CRECHE) with funding from our diocese’s Together Now campaign. As Executive Director of CRECHE, The Rev. Isaac Everett (above right) serves at the altar and in our pulpit from time to time. They rent from our diocese the former rectory of St. Luke and St. Margaret at Packard’s Corner, Allston. Learn more about the intentions of Emmanuelites who live there on their website.
September. The Rev. Susan Ackley joined us while our rector the Rev. Pamela Werntz took sabbatical leave. In addition to preaching and provided pastoral care, she was instrumental in creating a weekly Recovery Eucharist held in Lindsey Chapel.
Digits of the hamsa signify generosity, strength, replenishment, blessing & well-being.
The theme Pam chose for her sabbatical was exploration of the hamsa, a palm-shaped symbol used by Muslims, Jews, and Christians, also known as the Hand of Fatima and the Hand of Miriam. She visited Istanbul, Vienna, and Andalusia in search of its depictions. We also used it for our stewardship campaign.
The Temple in a Church
Celebrating 13 Years of Love & Friendship
Sunday, October 15, 2017; Rabbi Howard A. Berman
This morning, in my first sermon of both this new church program season, as well as our Jewish New Year, 5778, I want to share some reflections on a very special shared milestone for all of us — of both Central Reform Temple and Emmanuel Church. The New Year, that we have just celebrated, is indeed a momentous one for all of us of the Temple, as we mark the 13th Anniversary of the Founding of our Congregation! Just three weeks ago, our celebration of Rosh Hashanah inaugurated what we are calling our Kehilat Mitzvah Year– an egalitarian Hebrew variant on the Bar and Bat Mitzvah 13th birthday tradition, which means “ A Community of the Commandments.” In this very symbolic way, we seek to frame and reaffirm many of our Temple’s core values as we celebrate this milestone. Continue reading
2017
- Feb. 5. At our annual meeting we voted to update our Parish By-Laws.
- Oct 15. Rabbi Howard Berman preached about the 13th anniversary of our relationship with Central Reform Temple (formerly Boston Jewish Spirit).
- Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosiland Rosenberg is published by Oxford U. Press. Amazon’s record describes her contribution: “Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country.”
Book jacket, Oxford U. Press
Its last chapter deals with Pauli’s call to ordained ministry. On p. 356, Rosenblatt notes that in 1967 Pauli began to attend Emmanuel, where then rector Alvin Kershaw advised her and referred her to The Rt. Rev. John W. Burgess, who was our diocesan bishop and the first African American episcopal bishop.
See also Timeline entries for Pauli Murray: 1944, 1951, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.
See also Timeline entry 2007 about the restoration of our former organ: Casavant Frères Opus 700.
2016
The Rev. Robert Greiner
June. The Rev. Robert Greiner was ordained to the diaconate and began his tenure with us.
Kevin Neel began his six-year tenure as organist and director of our parish choir.
Kevin Neel playing our Rogers organ
2015
April 4. The New York Times reported that Pauli Murray’s family home in Raleigh NC had been named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
As part of the Pauli Murray Project a memorial mural painted on the brick wall of a former tobacco warehouse in Durham NC shows her flanked by panels that read:
As an Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray used the pulpit to find the “spirit of love and reconciliation” as expressed in her ministry as the “goal of human wholeness”. — Karla Holloway
It may be that when historians look back on 20th century America, all roads will lead to Pauli Murray. Civil rights, feminism, religion, literature, law, sexuality — no matter what the subject, there is Pauli. — Historian Susan Ware
Pauli Murray taught us that our lives are not defined by our race or our gender but by our striving to make the world a better place than when we found it. — Elnora J. Shields, Southwest Central Durham Quality of Life Project
Pauli Murray mural (detail) on tobacco warehouse in Durham NC
See also:
2013
March. With support from the Lilly Foundation, our rector Pamela Werntz left on her sabbatical pilgrimage to Iona, Scotland, several sites in the Holy Land, and Ste. Maxime, France, where she sought inspiration from Mary Magdalene. The Rev. Susan Ackley became our Sabbatical Priest/Artist in Residence.- April 13. Faculty from Leslie University’s Expressive Arts Therapy Program spoke after the service about how their students might assist with such programs as Emmanuel Cafe and Common Art. Our Leslie interns have described their experiences since then in Musings from the Margins.
- April 15. Two bombs exploded on Boylston Street near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring several hundred others. Leslie students joined people at Emmanuel in creating memorial flags in an event called “When Words Are Not Enough.”
The Rev. Susan Ackley, our Sabbatical Priest/Artist-in-Residence, and participants in “Words Are Not Enough” carry prayer flags down Newbury Street to the Boston Marathon bombing memorial site in Copley Square.