Trinity Newsthe magazine of trinity wall street

spring 2013 vol. 60 | no. 1

The Holy Spirit in

Community

B Trinity News

FEATURES

9 The Spirit Leads Us Out Dwight Zscheile

11 Public Schools Anita Chan

12 Sharing a Sacred Space Daniel Simons

15 Life in the Churchyard

18 Acknowledge Your Iceberg Interview with Eric Law

20 13 Ways of Looking at Newtown Mark Bozzuti-Jones

DEPARTMENTS

1 Letter from the Rector

2 For the Record

6 Archivist’s Mailbag

8 Visitor File

14 Overheard

22 Anglican Communion

24 PsalmTube

25 What Have You Learned

26 Parish Perspectives

28 Pew and Partner Notes

29 Letter from Lower Manhattan

Trinity NewsTHe MAgAzINe OF TRINITY WALL STReeT

SPRINg 2013

VOL. 60 | NO. 1

TRINITY WALL STReeT

74 Trinity Place | New York, NY 10006 | Tel: 212.602.0800

Rector | The Rev. Dr. James Herbert Cooper

Vicar | The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee

executive editor | Linda Hanick

editor | Nathan Brockman

Managing editor | Jeremy Sierra

Copy editor | Max Maddock

Multimedia Producer | Leah Reddy

Art Director | Rea Ackerman

FOR FRee SUBSCRIPTIONS

74 Trinity Place | New York, NY 10006 | 24th floor | New York, NY 10006

news@trinitywallstreet.org | 212. 602.9686

Permission to Reprint: Every article in this issue of Trinity News is available

for use, free of charge, in your diocesan paper, parish newsletter, or on your

church website. Please credit Trinity News: The Magazine of Trinity Wall Street.

Let us know how you’ve used Trinity News material by emailing

news@trinitywallstreet.org or calling 212.602.9686.

All photos by Leah Reddy unless otherwise noted.

On the Cover:

Children participate in the pancake race at the Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras celebration in St. Paul’s Chapel.

Correction:

The cover of the 2012 winter issue of Trinity News was photographed by Leo Sorel.

l e t t e r f r o m t h e r e c t o r

Announcing My Retirement From Trinity

In fulfillment of my commitment to serve at least 10 years as rector of Trinity, and in confidence that the parish is well positioned for the future, the Vestry has granted my request to retire from Trinity. I will serve as rector until February 28, 2015.

During these past nine years of shared ministry, Trinity has thrived in its worship and mission and met many challenges. Trinity has truly become a vital presence and voice in Lower Manhattan, enriching our congregation, neighbors, and community. We have accomplished this by living into a depth of Christian commitment that has transformed and multiplied our ministries and expanded opportunities for engagement near and far.

Trinity has emerged from the traumatic financial downturn of 2008 with its patrimony intact and its ministries flourishing. Trinity’s real estate portfolio was positioned well, tenants were treated fairly and with goodwill, and parish staff levels were maintained.

This safe passage was accomplished while launching a historic rezoning application that will create a “new” New York City residential neighborhood in Hudson Square, allowing the parish to maximize the value of its commercial properties in its funding of mission. And we have embarked on a multi-year capital enhancement program that preserves and maintains Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel, two of New York City’s most treasured and iconic landmarks.

During this time we also made some difficult decisions that required deep listening and rigorous analysis. We determined that closing the beloved Trinity Conference Center was a wise course of action. The Occupy Wall Street movement challenged us to find a balance between welcoming hospitality and proper stewardship of the land entrusted to our care.

As I begin the next phase of my work at Trinity, I am pleased to observe that we are operating with increased transparency in governance, financial reporting, and grant-making.

I am proud of the work we have accomplished and grateful for the opportunity to be Trinity’s rector during a time of great challenge and opportunity. I look forward to the next two years as we continue to strengthen Trinity’s ministries in Faith Inspiration, Formation, and Action, and as we continue the capital enhance-ments and improvement of our sacred and ministry buildings.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooperjcooper@trinitywallstreet.org

PAGe 2

trinity’s rector retiring in 2015

PAGe 3

trinity Supports community Schools

Ashes All Day

teNebrae concert Series

PAGe 4

thanking Staff for Sandy Work

Book features trinity Staffer

PAGe 5

trinity cemetery final resting Place for mayor Koch

meeting with New Archbishop

In February, the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, XVII Rector of Trinity Wall Street, announced that he will retire in 2015.

“I am proud of the work we have accom-plished and grateful for the opportunity to be Trinity’s rector during a time of great challenge and opportunity,” Dr. Cooper wrote in a letter to the Vestry published on the Trinity website.

“It’s not a surprise to me or the Vestry,” he said at a forum on February 17. Last year he told the Vestry he intended to retire sometime after he completed his 10-year commitment to Trinity. Dr. Cooper became Trinity’s 17th rector in 2004.

“Trinity is a parish that requires unique skills sets,” said Vestry member Betty Whelchel. “We talked with the bishop and felt this was a necessary two year process.”

During the next 18 months, a Call Committee, comprised of the four officers of the Vestry and the two officers of the Congregational Council,

Trinity’s Rector Retiring in 2015

will conduct a search for a new rector. This will be followed by six months of co-leadership, allowing the new rector to become familiar with the organization and staff.

Dr. Cooper will remain rector until February 28, 2015.

At the forum, he answered questions from the congregation about his retirement. “I feel like we’ve accomplished a lot in my time,” he said, in-cluding aligning of the ministries of the church, as well as weathering the recession without layoffs and leaving Trinity’s real estate in Hudson Square well positioned.

Dr. Cooper is celebrating 42 years of ordained ministry this year. He and his wife, Tay, are look-ing forward to the next stage of their lives and ministry, though that is still two years into the future. “For me there are a couple more laps,” he said.

Full coverage of Dr. Cooper’s tenure will be featured in the Winter 2014 issue of Trinity News.

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, Rector, speaking with parishioner Ben Johnson on Palm Sunday.

Trinity News 3

Trinity Supports Community Schools “Our schools cannot be successful without our communities,” said Trinity staff member Anita Chan at a panel discussion on February 16. “Our communities cannot flourish without our schools.”

Chan was part of a panel discussing Com-munity Learning Schools at the 2013 New York Association of Black, Latino, and Asian Legislators Conference in Albany. Community Learning Schools is a program spearheaded by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and supported by many organizations, including Trinity Wall Street.

Community Learning Schools seek to sup-port the whole child, addressing basic needs and physical and emotional well-being in addition to promoting strong academics.

“We at the UFT have long believed in community schools,” said Karen Alford, Vice President of Elementary Schools for UFT, who organized the panel. “We view the school as the hub of the community. Services for children and adults take place at the school.”

The program started in September and is already going strong at six schools in New York City. Services offered have included a vision clinic, renovation of a baseball field, and providing 10 pounds of food every month to families in need. Funds are provided by corporations and faith organizations like Trinity. Last year Governor Cuomo pledged $15 million in support of the program as well.

“It’s not just about my child, it’s about all our children. We all have a role in this,” said Chan.

“Not just schools, parents, and teachers, but also businesses and faith organizations.”

The program funds resource coordinators who work with parents and community members to determine the needs of the neighborhood and develop programs. These coordinators report to a school advisory board of school staff, parents, local businesses, and service organizations.

“We have to rely on the community, rely on organizations with resources,” said Jackie Rowe-Davis. The founder of Harlem Mothers SAVE, she has lost two sons to gun violence. “Every-body has to take responsibility.”

The room was filled with teachers and parents and those passionate about education. Many responded vocally and clapped in appreciation.

Between three and four thousand people at-tended the conference.

Chan was invited by the UFT to speak again at the New York State Assembly Hispanic Task Force on March 5. Trinity’s involvement in community schools complements its efforts to work both locally with schools in Lower Manhattan and on a larger scale by engaging with legislators and national networks of educators. Trinity made a grant to the UFT in November 2012 to help pilot the program.

The UFT is now in the process of picking a new cohort of schools and developing a portfolio of organizations that can offer programs to meet community needs.

“Organizations and businesses are coming out of the woodwork,” said Alford. “Everybody wants to be involved. We’re building a movement.”

TENEbrae Concert SeriesDuring Lent, Trinity Wall Street presented TENEbrae, a six-week series of impassioned early music performances featuring TENET, one of New York’s preeminent vocal ensembles. The series took its name from the Tenebrae service of Holy Week. Performances included works by Buxtehude, Couperin, Tallis, Gesualdo, Charpentier, and Victoria. In an enthusiastic review, The New York Times wrote, “Lovers of culture must always be vigilant about protecting what matters. And Trinity’s music—indispensable and unmissable—certainly does.”

Ashes All DayFor the second year in a row, Trinity offered ashes to tourists and businesspeople outside the walls of the church on Ash Wednesday. Priests, parishioners, and staff members stood outside St. Paul’s Chapel and at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway to mark the foreheads of passersby and offer the reminder, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The custom of imposing ashes dates back over a thousand years, marking the beginning of the season of Lent.

4 Trinity News

“She’s totally transformed our lives,” Angelica Roman-Jimenez said of her daughter, Erika.

Erika was born with Down syndrome 20 years ago. Since then, Roman-Jimenez, Program Administrator for Faith Formation and Educa-tion at Trinity, has told her family’s story to new parents, hospitals, grandparents, teachers, and, most recently, the author Andrew Solomon.

“Anything that raises awareness about children and people with Down syndrome in a positive way, I want to be a part of it,” she said.

Roman-Jimenez was one of over three hundred people Solomon interviewed over the course of 10 years for his book, Far From the Tree, published in 2012. Solomon found Roman-Jimenez through the national Down Syndrome Society, where she was listed as a contact person. They spoke in 2004 and again in 2007.

The book is on The New York Times bestseller list and has received critical acclaim.

Solomon spoke to families with children “with recessive genes, random mutations, prenatal influences or values and preferences that a

On January 22, First Quality Management (FQM) and Securitas staff gathered for a luncheon thanking them for dealing with the rushing water and long days during Superstorm Sandy.

Trinity subcontracts much of its maintenance and security to FQM and Securitas. Nearly seventy-five people spent four days and nights at Trinity’s buildings in Manhattan during the storm.

“We were pumping water out for three days straight,” said Paul Balgobind, an engineer for

FQM who has worked at Trinity for 16 years. He held up a photo on his cell phone of water pour-ing down basement steps.

When the staff saw that the storm was on the way, they called in extra personnel and made what preparations they could. They shut off the power when necessary, put out sandbags, and made sure the emergency generators were working.

The biggest problem was communication, said Dana Devito, Director of Night Operations. After the storm the phones were down, so work-ers walked from building to building to make sure everything was in good shape.

John Heffernan is both a member of the par-ish and an employee. He worked in four-hour shifts between Sunday, when the storm hit, and Thursday. “It was a little rough,” he said, “but it’s always good to give back.”

A slideshow of staff photos was projected on the wall as the guests enjoyed a buffet and desserts. Employees pointed each other out as the photos flashed up on the wall.

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, Rector, shared a story of visiting each building in the days after

Thanking Facilities and Security Teams for Superstorm Sandy Work

child does not share with his progenitors.” This included child prodigies, deaf children, children who had Down syndrome, and many others.

“As such parents look back,” writes Solomon, “they see how every stage of loving their child has enriched them in ways they never would have conceived, ways that are incalculably precious.”

“I became this stronger person because of [Erika],” says Roman-Jimenez in the book.

Erika is 20 now, though Roman-Jimenez vividly remembers the day she was born, like a movie playing in her mind. She says Solomon captured it perfectly.

Roman-Jimenez spoke to her father on the phone after Erika was born. “He realized that something wasn’t right, and he couldn’t pull it out of me. He said, ‘Don’t worry, whatever it is, we’ll deal with it,’ ” she said. “Especially now that my father’s passed away, I’ll never forget that as long as I live, the unconditional love.”

Now, Roman-Jimenez continues to offer her story and her advice to others who have children with Down syndrome. “I want to be there in the

Critically Acclaimed Book Features Trinity Staffer

same way someone was there for me when Erika was first born.”

Erika was baptized at Trinity in 1992. She currently attends a work-based learning program in Rockland County and enjoys working at a Barnes & Noble store. Thinking of the many things she loves about her daughter, Roman-Jimenez said Erika can always tell if someone is genuine, loves books and DVDs, and is very organized.

“You realize, just like anyone else, that you don’t know what they’re going to be able to do in life.”

the storm and being moved by the dedication and determination of the staff charged with their care.

“This is a thank you for the extra effort people put in [during] the hurricane,” said Jason Pizer, President of Trinity Real Estate. “Our buildings were safe and secure. We sustained very little damage. People treated the property like their own homes.”

Steve Stahl, Special Foreman for FQM, has worked at Trinity for 35 years. He lives in Queens but spent his nights sleeping on cots and chairs provided for the staff. On his way home after four long days, he looked back and saw a strange sight. “The Manhattan side was dark, and Brooklyn was all lit up.”

Within a week electricity had been restored to all the buildings. Most of the properties had not sustained major damage, and most of the 15,000 people that work in Trinity’s buildings were able to return to work.

“They really came through,” said Al Amore, Senior Vice President of Trinity Real Estate. “They worked really hard and kept us going.”

Securitas employees Vioni Garcia and Leroy Henry

Angelica Roman-Jimenez and her daughter, Erika. Photo courtesy of the Jimenez Family.

Trinity News 5

Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City, now rests on a hill in the Trinity Cemetery near the corner of 153rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Not far from his gravestone is a gate with a sign on it that reads “The Jewish Gate.” While the gate has been there for many years, the sign was installed in 2008 when Mayor Koch purchased the plot.

“I was having dinner with Ed and my wife,” said Carl Weisbrod, who was head of Trinity Real Estate at the time. “I happened to mention that Trinity ran and operated the only active cemetery in Manhattan. He said he had always wanted to be buried in Manhattan because he loved New York City.”

In order to be buried in Trinity’s cemetery, Mayor Koch was advised by his rabbi to request that Trinity create a Jewish Gate. The sign on the gate and a low railing were installed around the plot to demarcate a Jewish section of the cemetery. This practice has a long tradition and symbolizes the different traditions in caring for the deceased.

“A Jewish community, before it builds a synagogue, before it does any-thing, builds a Jewish cemetery,” said Stephanie Garry, Director of Com-munity Relations at the Plaza Jewish Community Center. “Caring for the dead is one of the most sacred mitzvahs, good deeds, that we do.”

“We give thanks for his life and career and his deep love of New York,” said the Rev. Dr. James Cooper, Rector of Trinity Wall Street, who also helped Mayor Koch make arrangements in 2008.

Mayor Koch is one of four New York mayors known to be buried in the Trinity cemetery. The other three are Fernando Wood, Abraham Oakey Hall, and Cadwalladar D. Colden.

The inscription on Mayor Koch’s headstone, which he wrote, reads, “He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the city of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II.”

Also on the tombstone are the Jewish prayer, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” as well as the last words of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”

Next to Koch’s headstone is a bench with his name inscribed on it. “He was particularly happy to have a bench where others could sit,” said Weisbrod. The plot is on a hill, with a view of the cemetery.

Weisbrod worked with the mayor on many projects, including the redevelopment of Times Square, and remembers him fondly.

“Everyone is quite aware of his extraordinary energy, commitment to the city, his feisty personality, and his sense of humor,” he said.

“He loved a good argument, and he encouraged people he worked with to disagree with him. But if he embraced your decision, and it turned out you were wrong and he was right, he still supported you. I thought he was an outstanding mayor. I think the outpouring of affection demonstrates that [other] people feel that as well.”

Trinity Cemetery Final Resting Place for Mayor Koch

Meeting with New Archbishop of CanterburyThe Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, Rector of Trinity Wall Street, met with the new Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, in February. The Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega, Deputy for Anglican Partnerships, joined the meeting. In their discussion, the three focused on ministry on the African continent, an area both Trinity and the Archbishop care about deeply. Su

e Pa

rks

6 Trinity News

The Vestment Scandal of 1714

“And it was a most Masterly stroke of ArtTo give Fizle Room to Act his part;For a Fizle Restrain’d will bounce like a F--t,

But when it Escapes from Canonical HoseAnd fly’s in your Face, as it’s odds it does,That a Man should be hang’d for stopping his Nose,

Long Kept under Hatches, ‘twill force a VentIn the Shape of a Turd, with its Size and Scent,And perhaps in its way may besh-t a Vestment.”

Historical drawing of Federal Hall and the second Trinity Church circa 1790.

Trinity News 7

The preceding ditty comes from the dedication of the first play printed in America, Androboros: A Bographical [sic] Farce in Three Acts, Viz. The Senate, The Consistory, and The Apotheosis. Printed on August 1, 1714, it’s a gross—and funny—satire of colonial politics and power struggles, written by Robert Hunter, the royal governor of New York. And, fascinat-ingly, it’s all tied up in Trinity Church. The “Fizle” of the dedication refers to the Rev. William Vesey, the parish’s first rector.

Androboros (which means “man-eater” in corrupted Greek) takes aim at Hunter’s enemies in colonial New York: his lieutenant governor, Francis Nicholson, known in the play as Androborus; the Rev. Vesey, called Fizle; and members of the colonial assembly, given names like Doodlesack and Mulligrub.

To understand the play, we must travel back in time to New York City, 1710. The city was essentially a frontier town of about 6,000, a mix of Dutch, English, and enslaved Africans living south of Maiden Lane.

In June of that year, Scottish-born Hunter, then in his mid-40s, arrived in New York, never before having set foot in the New World. Hunter was an educated former soldier who had seen action in the War of Spanish Succes-sion and a good friend of Jonathan Swift and other members of England’s literary set. Hunter convinced the Crown to grant him governorship of New York in return for helping resettle 3,000 Protestant refugees from the Rhine region in what is now Germany to the Hudson Valley. Colonists did not take it well when a new governor showed up with thousands of ill asylum-seekers.

If Hunter had any romantic notions about governing the colony, they quickly disappeared. During the previous 45 years, New York had been governed first by the Dutch, then the English, then the Dutch again, then the English with a Catholic monarch, then a rebellious leader named Jacob Leisler, and finally the English under a Protestant monarch. There were continual power struggles between the royal governors and colonial assemblies, often over matters of taxation. Assemblies refused to vote to raise funds for public works or to pay government salaries, arguing the funds were being misspent.

Hunter’s exasperation with governing the colony drips from every line in Androboros. It’s easy to imagine him sitting in the governor’s house inside Fort George, near the Battery, gleefully pouring out his frustration in a play meant to amuse and educate his friends in England.

The play opens at a meeting of the Senate. At the urging of Androborus (Lt. Governor Nicholson), the pompous group of colonial officials argues over whether or not to be ruled by “this Plaguey Keeper,” Hunter. The conflict between England and the colonies that would erupt into Revolu-tionary War 60 years later is apparent. Hunter parodies the argument for colonial independence in a speech delivered by Mulligrub:

“Since it appears plainly, that we of this Tenement, who are Tenants thereof, are in danger of Being, by the Foundations laid, made Tenants therein, let us not lie Crying thereat, but be Valiant Therefore, and Vindi-cate our Rights There-from, Our Birth-Right Parliamentary Rights, settled upon us by the Ten Commandments.”

Senators sympathetic to the Keeper report the assembly’s activities to him. The Keeper always has the upper hand with the bumbling colonial fools.

In the next act, Fizle (Vesey) leads a conversation about how to get rid of the Keeper. “I have a Plot in my head,” Fizle says. “I’ll instantly have my long Coat Beskirted and Besh-t, and give out That it is He, or some of his People, who has don’t.”

While this may sound fictional—the governor accusing a powerful clergyman of befouling his own vestments in a plot to frame him—it’s based on actual events.

The Hunter-Vesey animosity began early in Hunter’s tenure as governor. A long-simmering conflict between a Presbyterian congregation and the Anglican authorities over possession of a rectory in Jamaica, now Queens, erupted. Mr. Poyers, the appointed Anglican minister, had arrived to take over the parish but was denied the rectory and salary by the congrega-tion, who were paying a “dissenting” minister. Hunter advised Poyers to sue in court, offering to pay the cost of the suit. Poyers instead took his complaints to Vesey, who wrote, and circulated to other clergy, letters to the Bishop of London and Earl of Clarendon about the matter and complain-ing, politely, about Governor Hunter’s approach.

Hunter felt betrayed and undermined by Vesey’s actions. He wrote a rebuttal to the Bishop of London. “Where we hoped a Father & Directour of the Clergy we may find the head of a faction,” he writes of Vesey.

The incident that inspired the vestment-befouling plot happened on Shrove Tuesday, February 10, 1714. Someone broke into Trinity Church through the “north window of the steeple and the window of the vestry-room” and vandalized and “grossly defiled” vestments and Prayer Books. Vesey, along with the vestry, approached the council with a request for help locating the offender, saying, “There are some Busey mockers & scoffers of Religion, who Ridicule both sacred things … vilifying the Ministers of Christ, & Exposing them & their Holy Function to Reproach & Contempt.”

Hunter, complying with Vesey’s request, issued “A Proclamation for the Discovery of Those Who Desecrated Trinity Church.” The proclamation has prompted scholarly suggestions that Hunter was openly accusing Vesey himself of having committed the crime, calling the crime “the hellish devices of those who may have endeavored to lead the innocent with their own guilt.” This must have been the final inspiration for Hunter, as Androboros was published just five months after the proclamation.

In Androboros, Fizle carries out his plot, then runs into the senate yelling, “O Horror! O Abomination … That Vestment, so Reverenc’d by the Ancient and Modern World, beskirted and Bedaub’d with what I must not name!”

The Keeper and his faction triumph in the end, trapping Androboros and Fizle in the trap they themselves built for the Keeper.

There’s no record of Androboros ever being publicly performed or of Vesey ever reading it. Interestingly, William Bradford, the printer of Androboros, was a parishioner and former vestryman of Trinity Church. Bradford was a champion of freedom of the press; he had a long history of printing without regard to his personal views on the subject. He was also the official royal printer at the time.

Hunter left the post of royal governor in 1719 to take a job as comptrol-ler of customs in England. Vesey served as rector of Trinity Church until his death in 1746. The befouler of his vestments was never caught.

vs.Left: Francis Hunter, royal governor of New York Right: The Rev. William Vesey, first rector of Trinity Wall Street

8 Trinity News

CHeryl WillS

Cheryl Wills is an anchor and reporter for Ny1

News in New york City and the author of Die

Free: A Heroic Family Tale. She has spoken at the

United Nations General Assembly for

the international remembrance of Victims of

Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

and around the world. She spoke at Trinity’s

Discovery Adult education Class on January 27.

INTERVIEW BY JEREMY SIERRA

can you tell me about your book, Die Free? It’s about my great-great-great-grandfather, Sandy Wills, who was a slave in Tennessee and sold to Edmund Wills in the 1850s. He grew up on the plantation as a little boy and bonded with five other boys. When the civil war broke out and the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln in 1863, he escaped with the five boys and fought in the Civil War.

The story was lost to my family for more than a century. I happened upon it by going on a website [ancestry.com]. An amazing history unfolded before my eyes.

What made you write the book? My father, who was a firefighter and paratrooper in the military, was killed on the Williamsburg Bridge when I was 13 years old. When I was preparing his obituary, no one knew the history of his family. It was simply, “Clarence Wills served in the fire department, fought in the army.”

That really bothered me. I was a born journalist. I would grill my family members and ask them, “Well, who are we? What’s our story?” I would just get little bits and pieces but never anything where I could connect the dots to my satisfaction. Now forty-something years later, to learn this story is such an honor because my father didn’t know about Sandy’s amazing legacy in the Civil War, my grandfather didn’t know, his father didn’t know. They would have been richer people in their soul had they known about Sandy’s courage and what it took for him to escape a brutal plantation.

Why is it an important story to tell? To say that my great-great-great-grandfather helped end slavery with the United States Color Troops is an honor I will cherish for the rest of my life. I knew I had to share it with the world to encourage all people to find out the treasures in their own history. It is worthwhile for all Americans to research their family, especially in light of the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. It has been a rewarding and very spiritual experience. I have been blessed in my soul, and I give the blessing freely to anyone who can hear.

the book seems to be about your father as well. My father was a free man who was educated, put himself through school, and walked away from us. I wrote the book inside of a year because I was filled with a burning passion to understand why my father left us. I was so puzzled.

I believe that this kind of neglect of your family truly happens when you’re not planted firmly in who you are. He was like a leaf blowing in the wind. Sandy, although he was extremely disadvantaged, had a better footing because he understood the value of family, of fighting for your freedom.

We should not forget those who have come before, and their strength, because their strength lives on in us. We must keep their memories alive and build on their strength.

What role does faith play in this story? Christianity is what got all of us through. My great-great-great-grandfa-ther’s faith got him through that war. My faith got me through. Faith will keep generations yet unborn understanding their place in this world.

Sandy, my great-great-great-grandfather, got married after the Civil War ended to a lovely woman named Emma. Someone gave her a Bible, and every time a child was born, she had the people who had once owned her, who were now her neighbors, write the first and last name and the date of their birth in her Bible. This woman had faith in something she couldn’t even read herself.

When Sandy died she applied for his pension. When black widows applied the government would give them the runaround because they wouldn’t have proof that their children were born. When the federal government rejected her application, she hired a lawyer, and the only thing she had was that Bible. Using the Bible as proof, [she was able to secure a] pension for herself and her children.

It was the Bible in which she kept those sacred records of our family. It saved her in more ways than we could even know.

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Trinity News 9

The Spirit Leads Us Out BY DWIGHT ZSCHEILE

It has become commonplace to say we live in a new age of the Spirit. Spiritual

hunger and curiosity abound. World christianity is exploding with expressions

of faith in which spiritual experience is central. At the same time, we in the West

are inheritors of a modern secular worldview that tends to eclipse awareness of

God’s presence in our daily lives. What might this mean for local churches in

their neighborhoods?

I suspect that if many of us think about the Spirit, we tend to imagine the Spirit working within our hearts and lives privately. But in the biblical narrative, the Spirit also works between and beyond us as a public person who forms and reforms community. The Holy Spirit is a per-sonal, public power who makes God’s presence knowable.1 The Spirit moves over the face of the waters at the beginning of creation (Genesis 1). The Spirit liberates in times of distress, anxiety, and fear, and unifies and catalyzes God’s people for action. The Spirit raises up prophets to call people back to faithfulness when they have distorted God’s vision for human community through oppression and injustice.

I’m blessed to serve part-time at a local Episcopal church that has been trying to take seriously the idea that God’s Spirit is moving in our midst and in our neighborhood. Such an understanding changes our orientation and practices. We can no longer ask the questions, “What is our mission? What do we want to do? What do we want our church to be?” We must wonder deeply instead about what God is up to among and beyond us and how we are gifted and called in the power of the Spirit to participate. This means that discernment—the

1. Michael Welker, God the Spirit (Minneapolis:

Fortress Press, 1994), 2.

10 Trinity News

classical practice of attending to God’s presence and movement—becomes an ongoing and widespread part of the community’s life, not something episodic and occasional. Discerning means living life in a posture of wonder—curiosity, surprise, awe, and mystery.

Jesus’s identity is shaped by the Spirit as he realizes the promise of Isaiah 61 in his own ministry—proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4). The Spirit guides and empowers Jesus in his healing, teaching, and forming of reconciled community. And it is this same Spirit who raises Jesus from the dead after he plunges into the depths of human misery, suffering, and injustice on the cross. Resurrected life—for Jesus and for us—is life in the Spirit, the Spirit who opens up a new and eternal future.

Jesus leaves as his legacy a people gathered from disparate cultures and walks of life by the Spirit. The Spirit creates community by uniting, rather than erasing, created differences.2 In the community of the Spirit, human uniqueness is preserved yet brought into reconciled and just patterns of mutuality. All of this is profoundly public work in which we are caught up person-ally. God acts in the Spirit, not only among us, but also beyond us in the neighborhood.

Life in the Spirit means we must recognize the variety of cultures and differences present within and around us as God-shaped, rather

2. Ibid., 25.

3. The Book of Common Prayer, 855.

than expecting to assimilate others into a dominant culture. For the church I serve, where our membership currently includes immigrants from nine nations in the majority world, this means worship and music in a variety of global liturgies and voices. It also means recognizing that the Spirit’s creativity continues, and that our venerable traditions must be continually translated and adapted to speak to new populations and generations. This work happens best when those populations and generations share deeply with us in attending to the Spirit’s movement.

All of this invites Christians to redefine the term “spiritual.” In our wider culture, “spiritual” typically refers to the immaterial dimension of life. Yet, biblically, “spiritual” means life in the Spirit. Christians should capitalize the “S,” as in “Spiritual.” Spirituality for Christians is not a fuzzy part of life disconnected from the earthy, concrete realities of human existence—some-thing that we fit into the gaps when we feel like it. Life in the Spirit encompasses the whole of our selves and communities—the physical, economic, emotional, political, social, vocational, intellectual, and recreational. In the Spirit we belong not just to ourselves but to God in Christ and to one another, and, if so, to God’s creative and reconciling work in the world.

Perhaps most poignantly, we must embrace the posture of learners. The era of cultural establishment and privilege for churches in the

West fostered a sense of command, control, and professional expertise. The church saw itself as the spiritual experts for society, and we expected people to find us on our terms. That no longer works. Instead, we must join up with our neigh-bors on their turf and learn from them how to be in deeper relationships. We must recognize that the Spirit goes before us, leads us out, and shows up between us and our neighbors, especially those neighbors who are different from us. And in that process, new expressions of community are formed, expressions where the Spirit’s liberating, healing, reconciling power becomes palpable in the ordinary, particular, messy circumstances of everyday life. For a dis-ciple is, after all, a learner, student, or apprentice. Life in the Spirit is an invitation to share deeply in God’s “restoring all people to unity with God and one another in Christ.”3

The Rev. Dwight Zscheile is Assistant Professor of

Congregational Mission and Leadership at Luther

Seminary and Associate Priest at St. Matthew’s

Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. His books

include People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity

(Morehouse, 2012).

ImageZoo, Illustration Source

Trinity News 11

I really enjoy cooking with my children. It feeds body and soul and builds bonds that make community. In my home this takes place around the island that connects the kitchen to the living room. Friends and family have gathered around this island for many hours and numerous func-tions. It’s the heart of our big extended family. Now imagine creating this kind of space in our neighborhood public schools. Our schools could be hubs of the local community, a safe space with our children at the center.

Last fall, Trinity convened a group of educa-tors and church leaders who have already begun this work. The gathering was held in Richmond, Virginia, where St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is using this school-centered community model to support Woodville Elementary. Now Trinity is working with the United Federation of Teachers to promote a similar model called Community Learning Schools. These are schools where children receive everything from tutoring to health and social services, and where the broader community can receive services as well.

This model requires all members of a com-munity—parents, teachers, volunteers, businesses, community-based groups, faith institutions, and cultural organizations—to acknowledge the shared responsibility of raising all children. We have heard the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” If our schools, like my kitchen, are the place where our children learn and grow and are fed be-fore going out to become part of the community, then not only does it take the entire community to raise our children, but the success of our children can also transform our communities.

Once we recognize this, we can connect and leverage the social assets (our shared resources and talents) of our neighborhoods to assist our schools and exponentially increase our support of our children. Most of us have read Stone Soup, in which travelers provide the pot and a stone, and each member of the community brings a different gift to contribute until they end up with a delicious and nourishing pot of soup that is

enjoyed by all. Teachers do this on a daily basis. Why shouldn’t we all do this for our children, whether it’s buying a pack of paper or pencils or opening up our parish halls? Communities are rich in resources that, when put together, can provide the basic support that children must have to succeed.

Unexpected gifts arise from unexpected places when everyone in the community participates, whether it’s a hospital offering health services, a bodega contributing snacks, or a council member influencing the conversation. At Trinity, for example, a nearby high school has held after-school math programs in Trinity’s open community space, Charlotte’s Place; choir members offer classes in schools where arts programs have been cut; and parishioners promote literacy through the Read Aloud program. Each program is small, but the cumulative effect can be enormous. This is why public education is an area where private-public partnerships are critical.

When I cook with my children, not only do we feed our bodies, we promote creativity, share stories, and strengthen our relationships. Likewise, in education we need to focus on the whole child—body, character, mind, and soul. The data show that when children simply spend quality time with caring adults, they are more likely to stay in school and get better grades. Children are inherently bright, creative, and special beings. We need to nourish their development into healthy, caring, and respon-sible citizens.

The most exciting thing about this model is that it puts the focus back on our children. As adults, sometimes we focus so much on our disagreements that we cease moving forward and our children suffer. This alternative way of thinking—putting our children at the center of our communities—changes the conversation; the question becomes not simply “how is my child doing?” but “are all our children learning and living well?”

This is where the responsibility for what is happening in our schools sits on our shoulders. Faith institutions need to be the broad moral voice for our children and ensure that our public schools are not a setting for a war of values. Rather, they can be safe spaces, where we break down structures that support social inequality, where we learn and teach and feed minds, bodies, and souls. I challenge everyone to take on the shared responsibility of raising our children, to connect and leverage the social assets of our communities with our schools, and celebrate the gifts of the whole child.

Anita Chan is Associate Director of Faith In Action

for Trinity Wall Street. She can be contacted at

achan@trinitywallstreet.org.

What are Community Schools? Community schools are public schools that part-ner with community members and organizations to act as hubs for services for the entire neighbor-hood. There are more than five thousand schools using this model in the United States.

How does it work? Resource coordinators work with the school, parents, and people in the neighborhood to determine the needs of the community and find individuals and organizations that can provide services to meet those needs. Services range from health and medical services, to tutoring, to food and nutrition programs.

Does it make a difference? In Cincinnati, which uses a unique model that deeply engages the community, high school graduation rates have gone from 51 percent to 82 percent. In Richmond, Virginia, reading levels at community schools have increased significantly, and nationally, 80 to 90 percent of at-risk students involved in community schools’ programs showed improvement in academic achievement.

Public SchoolsRefocusing the

conversation on our children

BY ANITA CHAN

ImageZoo, Illustration Source

12 Trinity News

Trinity News 13

Sharing a Sacred Space

One of the great heritages that a church passes on is its buildings. Yet how we inherit the wor-ship space of a particular time, make it our own, and hand it on to others is a delicate question. If we are mere preservationists then worship can be frozen, becoming itself an object of worship, which is idolatry and the death of lively spiritual-ity. On the other hand, if we forget that we are just a tick of the clock’s hand in time and rebuild to suit the fad of the moment, we can mangle the coherence of a particular age’s architectural voice or leave behind a dated legacy that can’t speak beyond its generation (many churches are still cleaning up liturgical spaces designed in the ’50s and ’60s).

Trinity Wall Street is not exempt from these considerations. Our church (meaning the people of God) is housed in two spectacular edifices: Trinity Church, the third building on the site and now dwarfed by the elegant old skyscrapers of early Manhattan, but for many years the tallest building on the island; and St. Paul’s Chapel, a city treasure that is New York’s oldest public building in continuous use.

One of the tributes to the architects who designed Trinity and St. Paul’s Chapel is that the buildings have needed so little redesign over the centuries. Every time we put St. Paul’s to another use the founders would have never considered, we discover what perfectly designed proportions we’re working with. We have had dinners, con-certs, dances, and classes there, and after 9/11 it was a clinic and a kitchen and a dormitory. And then, of course, we have worshipped in so many different styles there, and it all works harmoni-ously because those who built it were listening deeply to the poetry of the space.

But that doesn’t mean we haven’t radically changed those spaces. Somewhere along the line at St. Paul’s, the pew boxes that had kept people warm in winter became charming but impracti-cal, and all but two, including George Washing-ton’s, were removed. And then, about six years ago, the pews were removed entirely. Having experienced the capacity of the chapel to be

something much more than a church, Trinity’s leadership listened deeply to the need of the moment and decided that the bones of the building could withstand, and even incorporate, that radical decision. In the years since, that choice has proved itself to be a good one, and once-skeptics now comment on what a new range the chapel has.

I’m not making a case for removing pews; I’m making a case for listening deeply both to a building’s heritage and its call to mission in the moment. There are often ways of having both.

This year we are beginning to consider a mas-ter plan to renew the interior of Trinity Church. Much of it is the boring but important stuff: heating/cooling/sound/light. Some of it goes into that deeper stewardship of prayer: shall we make some of the pews moveable so that we increase the flexible use of the space? How does the altar area relate to the people, and is there a one-size-fits-all solution, or do we want flexibility there too? How do we make the rear of the church more welcoming to visitors—more porous to the outside world while maintaining its coherence and integrity?

As the architects work on these questions, we are all wrestling with this tension: any change we make affects those who come after us. In the same way that our architects gave us such good bones to work with in these buildings, our work has to be thoughtful and careful enough to be appreciated by our spiritual descendants, who will have different concerns from ours that we cannot yet see.

Tradition is the process of handing on the past to the future. In that process we inevitably leave our own mark. In every age the call is faithful-ness to the Gospel as we hear it, the call to follow Jesus in our own time.

The. Rev. Daniel Simons is Priest and Director

of Liturgy, Hospitality, and Pilgrimage for

Trinity Wall Street. He can be contacted at

dsimons@trinitywallstreet.org.

We worship in the

architectural decisions

of those who came before.

Our mark in some ages calls for great reform, in some ages holding steady, and sometimes we are even called to leave the building entirely. Look at

your building—what does it say about the community that built it? How has it shaped you and how have you shaped it? How does it help or hinder

you in living out the gospel now? What do you think god is calling your community to do or be in this next chapter of mission, and how will that be

reflected and enhanced by what you do with your building?

A drawing of the west façade of Trinity Church by the architect, Richard Upjohn.

BY DANIEL SIMONS

Jesus says to his disciples: There is much that I would

teach you, but you cannot bear it right now. So I will send the

Holy Spirit, who will lead you into all truth … And I think, you

know, look how many centuries we spent using Scripture to

justify slavery. Look how some religions still use their holy texts to

denigrate and subjugate women. But I believe it’s the Holy Spirit

who has been continuing to reveal God to us in those movements,

and what we’re trying to figure out right now is whether or not God

is leading us to a different understanding of gay and lesbian, bisexual

and transgender people that really does represent God’s will, and

before this we have just not been able to understand it.

The Holy Spirit Will Lead You Into All TruthThe Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air

overheard

Thinkstock

Trinity News 15

life in the Churchyard

“Whenever i travel, people often

recall fond memories of the Trinity

churchyard—a place where many

are buried, to be sure, but still many

more tourists, workers, and neigh-

borhood residents relax and children

play. in the churchyard, the congre-

gation holds easter celebrations and

commemorates the Feast of All Souls.

yes, the churchyard is a burial site; it

is also a gathering spot for the very

much alive, a sacred oasis set apart

from this busy city.

16 Trinity News

Even in the midst of life, we are

in death. And in the churchyard

we have a wonderful reminder that

death is never the final word. Too

often we remember Jesus’s death

and forget to live the Resurrection.

We are people of joy —a truth

the churchyard captures. So tourists

enjoy some time off their feet on the

churchyard benches. Parishioners

picnic in the pleasant weather. Tulips

and magnolias bloom. The area’s

workers eat lunch before heading

back to the office. And children play

tag and hopscotch, making memo-

ries of their first spiritual home.” The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper,

Rector of Trinity Wall Street

Trinity News 17

18 Trinity News

I was born and raised in Hong Kong and my family immigrated to the United States in 1970. One of the places that we settled was in New York City, so I was a New York kid. I’m third-generation Christian, cradle Episcopalian. We settled at Our Savior, at the time a mission.

I was the organist for this little mission and listening to the priest preach both in English and Chinese, different sermons every Sunday. The way he preached in English was different from the way he preached in Chinese, and the content was different. We’re living in very different cultural contexts. The sharing and the expression of our faith ought to be different. There’s no one-size-fits-all.

While I was a campus minister, true to my engineering background, I was experi-menting with many different processes of the basic facilitating skills I learned in college,

Acknowledge your icebergTHE REV. ERIC LAW ON THE UNCONSCIOUS IMPACT OF CULTURE

INTERVIEWED AND EDITED BY JEREMY SIERRA

Eric Law is a priest, author, teacher, and the founder of the

Kaleidoscope Institute. In January, Trinity’s Congregational

Academy for Sustainable Leadership (CASL) and Hospitality

invited him to lead a workshop called Gifts of Grace:

A Workshop Exploring Diversity, Leadership, & Hospitality.

His newest book is Holy CurrenCies: 6 Blessings for sustainaBle

Missional Ministries.

Trinity News 19

plus what I learned in theological school and in an international setting in France [at the Catholic University of Lyon]. All of this came together as I developed a new way of engaging a multi-cultural community, what I call creating a gracious environment, a gracious space, in which no one person or group is disadvantaged for being who they are.

The Kaleidoscope Institute was founded in 2006. Our mission is to create sustainable churches and communities. We do that by focusing on developing competent leadership in a diverse changing world. How [do we] move our church community to become missional, meaning outward looking, connecting to people who are not already church members or Christians, and also sustainable, without draining resources?

The institute provides skills and processes and

models for churches to rethink how [they] can be sustainable, not just with money but with other kinds of currencies. We propose six crucial currencies: money being one of them, time and place together, gracious leadership, relationship, truth, and wellness. And we believe that if all six currencies are flowing through any ministry it will be missional and sustainable.

For example, the work that I’m doing with Trinity with the Gifts of Grace [workshop]: the overall goal is to increase the gracious leadership currency at Trinity by spending a day looking at leadership, building stronger relationships, and [coming to understand] each other’s gifts and needs. Toward the end of the day we were looking at exploring the truths about ourselves and the way we communicate and the truth about what conflict that could produce. It’s not anybody’s fault, but [by]understanding the truth behind the different experiences, we begin to establish wellness amongst each other.

The congregation of Trinity Wall Street is one of the most diverse congregations I have worked with. Using the gifts that come from diversity, Trinity can continue to discover new ways to reach out to the diverse community in Lower Manhattan.

The iceberg has a small piece above the water that we see and a large part under the water. So think of each person as an iceberg: our appearance, how we behave is above the water, but behind all of that might be things that we are not conscious of that impact the way we behave outwardly. We need to engage people below the water. Only conversation and dialogue at that level will move us to greater cultural sensitivity so that we’ll be able to work together constructively.

Now on top of that there is the institutional iceberg. For example, there might be an un-conscious pattern that a church has, and if you don’t know it you get bumped and don’t know why. At a lot of churches, newcomers will say, “I try to get in and I constantly feel like I’m doing something wrong and no one tells me what it is.” That’s when someone is bumping up against the institutional iceberg.

It’s not a bad thing that you have your ice-berg; just acknowledge it. Every church has its own personality and obviously attracts different populations. The proposal is to have a wider way of thinking about who is a member and learning how to deal with all the differences that diversity brings.

Churches often say, “We’re very friendly, and we’re good people, so why aren’t we as diverse as we think we should be? We want young people, we want families with children.” Good intentions only get you so far. I haven’t met a church that says they’re not friendly.

When a family with children comes in, and the children make some noise, [people] stare at the family, so [visitors think], “Well, you’re not supposed to make noise here.” That’s not very friendly. So the biggest challenge is acknowledging these things that are often unconscious.

Some of us are raised in a more direct way of communicating, and some of us are raised in a more indirect way, a storytelling, nonverbal kind of communication. And when you put the two types of styles into one room, you’ve got issues.

Classic example: if I’m being taught to be a good leader, I’m supposed to speak up, be a go getter. When I see someone who doesn’t do that, I might unconsciously think less of that person. Another person was raised [to think that] if you have a good idea, you share it in an indirect way, and the community will notice it and the leader-ship will invite you to share your skills, and to be humble is really important. That person will be looked at by the others as weak, whereas this person will see the go-getter as too disruptive, too prideful—and so on the unconscious level, we’re already putting up a wall based on how we were raised.

If you’re conscious of it then you work it through, viewing that which is unconscious and recognizing how we’re different at that level, and then arriving at a solution that values each other’s differences as opposed to taking those differences as a problem.

Trinity’s Rector, the Rev. Dr. James Cooper, staff, and parishioners at the Gifts of Grace Workshop. The workshop was facilitated by the Rev. Eric Law.

“My thoughts and prayers go out to anyone impacted by this senseless and terrible crime,” said illustrator Dave Cutler. Cutler, who lives in a community near Newtown, Connecticut, created this image on the night of the tragedy. He is donating the fee for his artwork to a fund benefiting Newtown.

Dave

Cut

ler

Trinity News 21

13Ways of Looking

at Newtown

BY MARK BOZZUTI-JONES

1 Dominus Providebit: Where is God? When tragedy happens to people and God’s people and when death stings what does God do?

2 December 12, 2012, Newtown, Connecticut: Irony of ironies, the young killer was named Adam. Before Adam started his killing spree, which would leave 20 children and six staff members dead, he had killed his mother.

3 How do parents lose their babies? Twenty and approaching billions of Abels Eve mothers those that weep for the death of their children Even adults are still children to parents Six to eight to millions of mothers and sons

4 Eight days after performing at President Obama’s inauguration, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was killed in a random shooting in Chicago.

5 Rachel weeps and there are many days she no longer worships or when she sits among the righteous and pretends to pray. She still gives birth …

6 Thirty children die each day from gun violence in America; about 30,000 people of all ages die each year.

7 There are times when God knows the beating of our words; words that are No more ...

8 When Jesus was confronted by an angry crowd seeking to arrest him and put him to death, Peter lashed out and cut off a soldier’s ear. “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword’” (Matt 26:52). Jesus, then, restored the soldier’s ear.

9 Where do national security and personal security dovetail, contradict, and/or embrace the Gospel? Can the Gospel invitation to turn the other cheek be of any use in this debate? Are we to roll over and die in the face of injustice? Are we called to love our enemies and pray for them while they are doing us harm?

10 We see in Jesus and his arrest a model of fearlessness in the face of those who would kill the body. He resists with nonviolence rather than attempting to save his own life by force. This is his challenge to us.

11 Made in your image sometimes gives me hope That when we kill each Other we kill You Lord, have mercy and help us take off our shoes Is this the truest teaching ever, cost it what it will, that Jesus’s supreme gift is to show God dying in Isaac?

12 With fear driving our public-policy decisions, we have set ourselves on a path that no wisdom tradition, let alone Christianity, would embrace as life giving. We need to support commonsense gun safety measures, remove guns from our homes and schools, and provide our citizens with hope for a future motivated by God’s goodness, not by fear.

13 Jesus is always right: when we live by violence, we will die by it.

The Rev. Mark Bozzuti-Jones is Priest for Pastoral Care and Nurture for Trinity Wall Street.

Any attempt to write about tragedies caused by gun violence must acknowledge my ongoing

prayers to God for the victims. I own that I cannot imagine the horror that these parents

must still live with every day.

22 Trinity News

Using What God Has GivenConversations with Trinity’s Partners in Africa

In 2012, Trinity hosted a conference entitled “Structure for Sustaining

God’s Mission: Governance and Financial Management” in Nairobi, Kenya.

Jim Melchiorre, Senior Video Producer for Trinity Wall Street, spoke with

several of the bishops in attendance who partner with Trinity. Below are

excerpts from some of those interviews.

The Rt. Rev. Mugenyi William Bahemuka became a priest because he wanted to offer the Gospel to young people. Now the bishop leads the Anglican Diocese of Boga, in the northeastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The people of his diocese have dealt with militia attacks and other tribal violence since 1997. In spite of those difficult conditions, the church is growing there.

JM: With all your enthusiasm, I’m not surprised that you were first called as a youth pastor. Could you tell us, in your context in eastern Congo, about young people and the church, and how they’re being attracted to it?

Bishop Bahemuka: The church in eastern Congo is mainly made of young people and women. This is the group of people who are very active and committed, so we need to have a very special ministry for young people and women. And my area was mainly for young people. We developed a special approach, strategy, and a way of ministering to young people. Not sitting in a church and waiting for them to come—to go out to them, and live with them, and understand their concerns and their problems, and to share life with them. So you build trust with them, and then you bring them to Christ.

JM: Could you tell us about the challenges of your diocese?

Bishop Bahemuka: The church has got some resources and [their use for mission] was also hindered by the war and the insecurity situation. But generally, there is a way of using what God has given us for the mission. And I go back to the young people. They are the people who still have energy, and we can empower them, and they can help us to make use of the resources we have.

storiesThe Rt. Rev. Samuel Enosa Peni Tari is the Anglican bishop of Nzara, in the southwest corner of South Sudan. Bishop Peni leads a diocese with an economy based on agriculture and lumber in a region where, over the years, many have died at the hands of a militant armed group called the Lord’s Resistance Army.

JM: Bishop, you tell a powerful story about your elderly father having his home invaded by armed soldiers and having to run and hide in a ditch, protected only by two family dogs. It certainly gave me a sense of how people in South Sudan have had to live.

Bishop Peni: There has been war for many, many years. It is a rural place. People live there in great poverty, illiteracy. Those are the kind of challenges I find to getting to do mission in this area. But the good thing there is that people love to serve God, and persecution has brought them closer to the church.

JM: All across Africa, people are discussing the question of how to ensure that the church can be financially sustained in future decades. Have you got any ideas for your context in the Diocese of Nzara?

Bishop Peni: The diocese has gone through what we call a strategic planning. Where do we want to be in five years? We want to start with what we have, so in terms of the local resources available, the land that we have, the soil that we have, which we can use for making bricks, but we always go out to ask people for things which we cannot find in our own places, like iron sheets, cement, and all those things. It is quite a chal-lenge because we are beginning from a grass-roots base with a lot of work to do, but laying the right foundation is always good.

Photos by Jim Melchiorre

Trinity News 23

The Rt. Rev. Hilary Adeba is the Bishop of the Diocese of Yei, part of the Anglican Church in Africa’s newest country, South Sudan. Yei was once nicknamed “Little London” but became a crossroads for rival military forces as well as refugees during the two-decade-long Second Sudanese War that ended in 2005. Simple traditional buildings called tukuls were used for emergency lodging during that period. Now they’ve been transformed into a ministry that not only provides services to people but which also helps finance the future of the church.

JM: Bishop, I’ve been very inspired by the story of the guesthouse at Yei as an example of something that was located at the crossroads of a terrible thing, the war, that has turned into a very good thing. What lessons do you take from that?

Bishop Adeba: About six years before the end of the war, we had started the idea of the guest-house. It started from tukuls [and] grew into tukuls having mats for people to sleep on, and some food was provided for those who wanted to stay in Yei. Gradually we were able to raise a little money, which amounted to $50. It is from this context that the Diocese of Yei transformed

The Rt. Rev. Joseph Wasonga leads the Anglican Diocese of MasenoWest in Kenya, a remote area where, incidentally, President Barack Obama’s father’s family has lived for generations. Bishop Wasonga oversees a variety of projects designed to serve the peo-ple of his diocese and to generate financial resources to keep the church alive and well. However, he sees himself first as a pastor.

JM: Could you please give us a summary of the context of your diocese?

Bishop Wasonga: My diocese is located on Lake Victoria. The area is malaria-prone because of the water that surrounds us there. The area also has waterborne diseases like typhoid. The area has been fairly underdeveloped in the past. We spend a lot of time giving social services to people. [We] currently sponsor 154 primary schools and 55 secondary schools to provide education for the people in the area. We get into social services like providing water and sanita-tion. And we also provide agricultural extension services because this is a rural community.

JM: And yet, with all your administrative responsibilities, it seems as if you still have that real call to ministry and to the priesthood, being a pastor.

Bishop Wasonga: One thing that I believe touched me and led me to commit my life to Christ was the fact that when I was lonely and alone, somebody reached out to me. And actu-ally that is where my ministry springs from, that there are so many people who feel lonely, who feel excluded, who feel misunderstood, people who feel like they’re outsiders. And so, because of that, I have developed a posture of welcoming people. I reach out to young people a lot. I reach out to women a lot in my diocese. Wherever I go, I try to have a posture that invites people, that affirms people, that tries to support people and let them feel that they are needed, that they belong. They need to feel that they are not a mistake because sometimes some people act as though they are apologizing for their existence. And as a pastor I want them to know they are not a mistake. It is God who created them, and they have room in God’s kingdom, and they have room in my life.

slowly to where we are now, having two blocks of self-contained rooms and, in addition, we have over 40 other rooms that are not self-contained. And this is where now we realize an income for the diocese, but our aim is to reinvest this money so that we can increase the facilities, because there is a demand in Yei for good facilities, because there are a lot of visitors who go there.

JM: Can you please give folks a sense of the con-text of what you and the people of South Sudan, and the church, have been through over the years. It was really a struggle, wasn’t it?

Bishop Adeba: Yes, it was. It was a great struggle. We had almost nothing, really, but we had to start with the little grass-thatched houses which we call tukuls. In fact, it was like tightening our belts, so that the little money we were raising from the guesthouse was reinvested in a small way to bring us where we are. And the focus now is, to quote from Isaiah, to increase our territory: in other words, to multiply what we are doing in the guest-house. The guesthouse is our main income-gener-ating project, and we are seriously focusing on it.

Jim Melchiorre is Senior Video Producer for

Trinity Wall Street. He can be contacted at

jmelchiorre@trinitywallstreet.org.

24 Trinity News

One of the more ridiculous things I’ve come to believe quite fervently is that Lady Gaga is a monk. Somewhere in that thought lurks a nod to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where Gaga was educated here in New York City, for you cannot tell me the vestments and habits and liturgy did not play a role in Ms. Gaga’s penchant for costumes, drama, and performance. Yes, the musical nymph of pulsing euro-synth fashions sacred walls from city dance halls, and veins of spiritual richness flow beneath the powdery surface of her songs. Like Ms. Gaga herself, the songs are costumed.

“Telephone,” for instance, is very clearly about not taking a call. Call all you want but there’s no one home/And you’re not gonna reach my telephone. Something interesting happens, though, when you listen to the song with its deeper subject in mind. The subject in question is not, in fact, a lover’s call, but rather the relentless emotional drive to work and keep on working that many of us feel. The kind of scurrying drive that makes rest difficult; the kind of thin, manmade anxiety that is somehow the opposite of faith. Apparently Lady Gaga wishes to address this drive, which makes sense, because to become as ubiquitous as she is you need talent and creativity, and a lot of ego and drive.

Self-reflection is not required in pursuit of pop dominance, but I find it charming

that Gaga’s got that, too. Her take on the song, according to an interviewer, is that the “phone … isn’t just a physical phone, but also that person in her head telling her to keep working harder and harder.” That’s the call she won’t take. I take this to mean that she is, in a lovely way, wary of her own ambition. Perhaps she knows that the creativity that is her quintessence gets run over by pure drive.

“That’s my fear,” she said. “That the phone’s ringing and my head’s ringing. ... Whether it’s a telephone or it’s just the thoughts in your head.”

The beeps and drones of telephone sounds function as music in song; it’s not that hard to believe the words work two ways as well. This song about not taking a call is as much about hearing the call of silence. In a rambunctiously effective way, it’s about taking a moment or two in this loquacious, loud, and action-demanding world; about placing in our world a monk’s moment or two.

Lady Gaga, the modern monk who makes music and lives in the world, in your living room and your car, in your earbuds tickling your ossicles, knows that being driven solely by ambition obscures the deeper call of God.

Nathan Brockman is Trinity Wall Street’s Communica-

tions Director and Editor of Trinity News. He can be

contacted at nbrockman@trinitywallstreet.org.

Monastic Cell

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WhAt hAve You learned?I WoulD never Have tHougHt that I could find serenity through gardening. Getting on my knees, digging into the ground and planting seeds may seem like work to some people, but for me it is therapeutic. The garden is the place where I can get away for a moment of silence; it is a place where I reflect and meditate on my life’s journey.

garDenIng requIreS commitment. Using a shovel to turn over dirt and cow poop is never a really appealing thing to do, but I have learned that it is a necessary process. The same is the case with watering and weeding. If I am not consistently watering the plants, they lose the nourishment they need to survive. Likewise, if I fail to weed the plot, they lose the strength they need to produce fruit. One of the most important things I have realized about garden-ing is that my plants need me to be proactive in their process of growth and development.

KIDS love garDenIng because they can get dirty. I realized this last year when my step-son and I were planting seeds. He emphatically said, “I love gardening! I love it because I can get dirty without having to get in trouble!”

groWnupS love to be where the fruits and the vegetables are. I often see amazement and happiness overtake them at once as they spot a strawberry or a cucumber; their smiles light up the world. Some begin to search for fruits and vegetables as if they were on an Easter egg hunt. The garden has a way of bringing the little boy or girl out of grownups.

lIfe leSSonS can be learned through gardening. People all around me, especially my immediate family, need the same kind of attention I give to my garden—actually, they need it in a more intense and intimate way. As an outreach minister, my job is to plant positive seeds in the lives of people I encounter on a daily basis. Just as being a gardener requires that I drop to my knees, dig into the ground, and plant seeds, I must constantly be on my knees in prayer, digging for God’s wisdom and direction, and seeking for fertile ground to plant seeds of hope.

Daniel Marquez lives in Indianapolis with his wife and two step children, where he works for Indiana Precision Grinding and is active in his church, Eastside Trinity Tabernacle. In 2008, he wrote an article for Trinity News called Enter My World, about his life in prison and his spiritual growth. While in prison, he learned to garden and it has become an important part of his life and ministry.

26 Trinity News

A member of the reggae hip-hop group, Devine Interventions, in Charlotte’s Place.

Dr. Renita J. Weems, Bible scholar and ordained elder in the African Methodist Church, preaches at Trinity on Martin Luther King, Jr. Sunday.

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper, Rector of Trinity, visits the top of the Trinity spire with Luke Johns, Construction Project Manager. The spire was covered in scaffolding for repairs.

Trinity parishioners Toni Foy and Deborah Hope visit after a concert at Charlotte’s Place.

P A r I S h

perspectives

Trinity News 27

Trinity congregant, Marianna Ruggieri, and her grandson receive ashes on Ash Wednesday.

The Rt. Rev. Andrew Dietsche, Bishop of the Diocese of New York, imposes ashes on passersby outside Trinity Church on Ash Wednesday.

Tay Cooper dances with Alfred DiRaffaele at the Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday party.

Joyce Mondesire swings the censer alongside other Trinity parishioners during the Palm Sunday procession down Broadway.

Trinity parishioners Jelani Wiltshire, Alfred DiRaffaele, and Al Costello participate in the pancake race at Trinity’s annual Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday celebration at St. Pauls’ Chapel.

28 Trinity News28 Trinity News

Spread the WordDo you have news to share with the rest of the Trinity community? Email your news, milestones, and updates to news@trinitywallstreet.org or call 212.602.9686.

New Congregational Council Members ElectedOn March 3, Trinity Wall Street parishioners elected new members to the Congregational Council for 2013–2014. Sandy Blaine, Beverly Ffolkes Bryant, James gomez, Heather Lorch, and Tapua Tunduwani were elected; Mark Alvino, Michael Cornelison, and Donato Mallano were appointed by the Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee, Vicar. The new members join continuing council members Ryan Campbell, Pearl Chin, Deborah Hope, Regina Jacobs, Janet MacMillan, Lorna Nembhard, and Scott Townell. The Congregational Council includes a total of 16 people, including the vicar. At their monthly meeting on March 19, they elected James Gomez President and Scott Townell Vice President. Parish delegates to the 2013 Diocesan Convention were also elected on March 3. Representing Trinity will be emory edwards, Toni Foy, and Roz Hall.

Matthew HeydThe Rev. Matthew Heyd has been called as rector of the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City. He has been a Trinity staff member since 2003. As Director of Faith In Action, he has overseen the expansion of Trinity’s outreach programs, and he has also been an important pastoral presence in the parish.

Anita ChanAnita Chan, Associate Director of Faith In Action, will be moving with her family to Beijing in June, ending twelve years of service at Trinity. Her husband, Ray, has accepted an appointment as deputy attaché at the American embassy in Beijing. Anita has been the catalyst for Trinity’s renewed commitment to public schools, as well as the New York mission and service trips, the eBook Buddy program, and the global reimagining of the Trinity Fellows.

Adrian DannhauserOn March 2, Trinity member Adrian Dannhauser was ordained to the transitional diaconate. She will be graduating from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale in May and ordained to the priesthood in September. Dannhauser began attending Trinity in 2004 after moving to New York from Mississippi to practice law. She was confirmed at Trinity in 2006.

Lisa Bridge Lisa Bridge, Program Manager for Children and Youth Ministries for Trinity, was the Program Director for Hal Taussig’s new book, A New New Testament. The book includes a retranslation of the New Testament and 10 other ancient texts selected by a panel of theologians, pastors, bishops, rabbis, and other religious leaders. Bridge, who was also on the panel, explained that the book is intended to help recontextualize and deepen a reader’s understanding of the canon.

Deborah LeeDeborah Lee, Program Manager for Pastoral Care and Community for Trinity, will exhibit her photography in April at PAC House Theatre and Gallery at Trinity St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Rochelle, New York. This is Lee’s first ex-hibition, and it will feature 22 prints of subjects ranging from artwork to travel images.

John McCannTrinity parishioner John McCann was received into the Fellowship of St. John on February 7. Members of the Fellowship seek to live an ordered life of prayer and service in association with the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a monastic order in the Episcopal Church.

New BeginningsNew Beginnings, Trinity’s ministry of seniors, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Participants meet every Thursday for Bible study, midday Eucharist, and lunch. Many have been attending Trinity for decades.

News from Trinity’s partners and friends, near and far.

Pilgrimage to the Holy LandIn March, 20 members of the Trinity com-munity went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, exploring Jerusalem, traveling the path of Jesus through Bethlehem and Nazareth, and partici-pating in worship. This is the third pilgrimage made by members of the Trinity community.

Trinity Staff in the TheaterThree Trinity staff members recently performed in separate theater productions. Adam Alexander, Program Coordinator for Music and the Arts, performed in the ensemble of the New York Philharmonic’s production of Carousel, which received rave reviews. Mark Jaynes, Program Assistant for Liturgy, Hospitality, and Pilgrim-age, is a member of an acting company called Radiohole. Its recent play, Inflatable Franken-stein, was a New York Times Critics Pick and was given an outstanding review in the Times. Leah Reddy, Multimedia Producer for Trinity Wall Street, performed the part of Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Polly, in My First Lady. The play was part of the Founders Festival at the Metropolitan Playhouse, and it was given an excellent review by NYTheater.com.

Scholars Program About fifteen students from Leadership and Public Service High School are studying math in Charlotte’s Place. They are taking a compressed geometry course that prepares them for state exams and allows them to take advanced math classes. The students had to apply to participate in the program, and must work hard to stay in the program. They meet in Charlotte’s Place on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday afternoons. “The kids love this place,” said Leah Khevelev, one of the math teachers.

“Don’t force the moving parts,” my mother would advise when she saw me struggling with something mechanical (not my forte). It was a matter of respecting how things were designed. Stripped threads on a screw or small pieces broken off a kitchen appliance were evidence that I didn’t always follow her good advice.

Mom applied her own advice in her approach to parenting. She loved and accepted us kids just the way we were, encouraging us in our inter-ests. She never tried to steer us away from where our emerging aptitudes seemed to be leading. She didn’t force the moving parts but allowed us

each to grow and flourish into unique beings.As I a priest, I apply the same advice to couples preparing for marriage. To go into a

marriage expecting to change the other person is a recipe for disaster. To have mutual love and respect for one another, accepting the “design” of the other, is the better way. “Don’t force the moving parts” of personality and temperament, family dynamics, and individual interests, or else damage will occur.

Scripture and experience suggest that Mom’s advice applies to reconciliation as well. The gift of reconciliation begins with God, who acted first, as Paul explained to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 5:18). We can accept this great gift and then join with God in the ongoing work of it, but we cannot force it. It is God’s Spirit who does the work through us.

In another letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13), Paul wrote about love, an essential element in reconciliation. Love is patient (it doesn’t force), and love is kind (it accepts and respects); it does not insist on its own way (no metaphorical stripped screws or broken-off parts).

Any time there is more than one person involved—and so, by definition, in any relation-ship—there inevitably will be differences. Even with the best of intentions, from time to time there will be hurt feelings, offense taken, or some other harm done to the relationship. If we had to force reconciliation, depending on our own ego and strength, it would never happen. Thankfully, reconciliation is possible because it is God’s loving, forgiving, reconcil-ing love that flows through us.

We don’t have to force it, just be open to it with humility, emulating Christ’s own self-offering. Through the willingness to listen, to see from the other’s perspective, to seek the best for the other, reconciliation happens, and it is we who are changed.

Blessings,

The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee

Vicar, Trinity Wall Street

amallonee@trinitywallstreet.org

Leo Sorel

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Night Prayers & New Music at St. Paul’s Chapel

The Choir of Trinity Wall Street Julian Wachner, conductor

Sunday Evenings, 8pm

St. Paul’s Chapel Broadway and Fulton Street

Listen online at trinitywallstreet.org/compline