Happy New Year

Scott Lord Silent Film: Boston Common and Proper (Phillip M Brown)

Scott Lord Silent Film Everything looks the same....almost.

Donna’s Library

Donna dressed for work in a hurry.

We happenned to notice four hours into her shift. She kept thanking me all morning for getting us here on time.

The Little Girl Thought I Was Santa Claus

Donna was at her desk in the library and I went to bring bring her back a coffee. A little girl was crawling underneath one of the tables and playing when she pointed toward me and waved. Well, I thought it was a merely friendly child just waving so I continued on to get coffee and may have quickly half-waved back while spinning through the congregating congregation. Her father, whom I know fairly well was laughing and said "You're Santa Claus". I was busy so politely fended it off apologizing for the snow white beard by saying that I've been sleeping less but would soon look like my old self. After bringing back the coffee, I got through part of an noncredit online college course on the Talmud in between services, which might not be what I'm interested in most and there were Holidays that include Sacred Ritual that I hadn't gotten to- but I needed something new after skipping taking courses during Covid-19 and it gave me the term "omnisignficance" in Rabbinic literature. The lectures were introductory and weren't from anyone that would be attending our service in this part of the country, but those can be made available sometime later and will cover the Torah. After her working in the library, we attended the church service and I got to say hello to our minister before he began the sermon. This is the third minister I've listened to but during that time there have been two, if not three, backup regular ministers, so Ican compare the present minister to others that may have included more personal ancedotes or more instant cross references of scripture to scripture- in general I might prefer his point of departure. Then there was Christmas music, a contemporary Christian "almost rock" band,arently guests from Boston College, the Voices of Imani Gospel Choir, that we had seen before in a different form with less brass instruments. I couldn't find the actual concert on You Tube, but as I mentioned they seemed to be quest musicians. After we got home, I realized that the little girl was waving because she really thought I was Santa Claus. I thought I might make an exception and add a song to the blog. Happy Holidays together as a fellowship and in your personal relationship to God, or covenant with God.

Where our church is in Boston

Right on Boston Common, on the other side of Beacon Hill. Historically, a number of colonial churches were destoyed long before the 20th century, but there are several important churches on Tremont Street and the street parallel to it. Donna is in the library at her desk, in between services. We gave a Bible to a student from Emerson College this morning and the library is just large enough,just barely, so that any college student in Boston is certainly welecome to visit for prayer. Humbly, not having been born and raised in the Congregational Church, I found a copy of the book The Holy Spirit and Power by John Wesley, with a prolougue by Charles Wesley. Wesley began preaching with George Whitefield in 1739, long after pirates like myself....

Can you spot Donna’s church in the mural and where is the church?

Donna's church was the tallest existing structure during the War of 1812, replacing Boston's Old North Church,which was the tallest existing structure during the American Revolutionary War. Can you find it in he mural. Where in Boston is the mural? Donna opened the library this morning, my having to turn on the lights. She had one or two patrons before the head librarian came down from attending the church service. In effect her ,Donna's seniority was come about. The short story I'm working on mentions her being alone in an empty library, as though it was where God would be, if you wanted to visit, the story itself confronting an earlier story written by John Updike, "The Music School".

Let There Be Love.

Poscript

Actually, being in the library, I was just observing one of the minister/professors conducting part of atour of the church, which you are welcome to try and might enjoy, but he had to explain that a service was inprogress to some young adults and that although we have many M.I.T./Harvard studemts attend and that, and I quote his disclaimer, "We are working for God", two which I add that there is an element or dimension of spirituality when entering the building if not a recoginition of the specific spirituality of others. (The Updikes I would not hesitate to invite as their father was Kierkegaardian and I passed a course on Soren Kierkegaard from the University of Copenhagen with an -A, as long as they note my 'joking' about Paul Revere and/or Anne Bradsreet).

We did have a discussion on "The nature of God" this week at the restaraunt and I'm very quick to begin: God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent and Benevolent and after that the conversation is limitless. Those four givens before we begin. Ministers seem more Christ orientated and Scriptural. This week I quickly added that there are four important things.

In the Old Tetsament: God is Israel and Man Enters a Covenant with God, one in which there is the promise of a Tommorow in exchange for Belief. Added to that, Moses is the greatest Prophet. In the New Testament: God is Love, a love created by his word being all, and Love Thy Neighbor. Those four or five things to explain the "Scriptural" nature of God. They are "tenets" and I am more than amenable to your adding more.
If you are in Boston and have already visited our church, here's a link to the Old North church, our Episcopal predecessor. The other really old church in Downtown Boston. If you have time to visit the webpage, you can probably make it to both in person.

Lunch on Nahant Beach

Lunch down town Boston on Temple Place, fairly quiet monday

The poetry of August.

The “Jonny Tremain Church” with earlier entry

I am in the library where Donna works and I noticed that the first three ministers who served here between 1811-1832 attended Yale College. (I have a photo of Donna in this blog with our first minister, one of the three out of five that attended Harvard University/Gordon-Conwell). This works out because Harvard Divinity School was founded in 1816, which seems incongruent to its history of burying ministers. I also have been skimming the novel "Johnny Tremain", by Ester Forbes. The major characters that appear with Johnny Tremain in the novel, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, James Otis, the orator, who gives speeches in the novel, and John Hancock, are all buried in our churchyard. The cemetary is in fact on Tremont Street, Boston. The fictitional Tremain would have been born around 1765. (Every week I try to avoid the story that the minister that preached here in 1969 founded the seminary adjacent to where I spent my childhood, Gordon Conwell, which before then was a Carmelite. His books are in fact in the library- it is being sold this year and I now live on the bus route to Harvard, on the thirteenth floor looking in the opposite direction toward Boston, the top of this steeple, the tallest structure in America when built, just visible.) So this is rightly the "Johnny Tremain Church" with all the patriots present and seen from the library's window. Donna is at her desk checking out books, having finished her reshelving. While in Boston, you'll note that the church does happen to be on The Freedom Trail and open to the public for the study of the American Revolution with other church within walking distance and is in fact on Historical Walking Tour of Boston with other museums, as is the graveyard, although the service is Congregational Trinitarian with a Catholic service offered by the Paulist Center of Boston, the church adjacent, next door. Once seperated by the offices of Little and Brown publishing, the churches are now connected. The Paulist Center dates from 1956. Our charter, from 1809, and its theology, is well worth looking at for history and divinity studens both alike.

When we got to church, Donna very nicely said, "I'm not a mother." She introduced herself to Dr. Elaine Phillips from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, who, also without children, echoed the same sentinment. I'm in the church library now which overlooks Boston Common on one side and is adjacent to the church burial ground on the other. I have noted in this blog that the church was built in 1809, before that it being a warehouse for brimstone during the revolution. The word brimstone comes from explosive ministers that make themselves audible in the thick of the fray. I have mentioned that Ben Franklin's mother is buried at the church as well as Sam Adams, Paul Revere, James Otis, John Hancock. The Old North church has crypt in the basement I believe.and the church across the street is a Puritan graveyard. My brimstonetone message for day was that Mother Goose is also buried in the church graveyard. After lunch, I'll be in the library with my wife Donna for the afternoon. THE REAL Mother Goose was named Mary Goose (Vertigoose) born around 1645.

Photo:wickpedia

My Sixtieth Birthday, Boston Common, Boston, Massachusetts

Donna has been asking all summer to go on the Swan Boats; her church is at the top of Boston Common and the Public Garden is at the bottom, so after lunch we went for my Sixtieth Birthday. Donna is Sixty Two. She had to go into the Ritz Carlton for a minute, so I photographed one of its paintings. The hotel was built in 1927. The Swan Boats, or the Hydrocycle rather, was originally powered by the bicycle and pedalled across the water when introduced in the late nineteenth century.

photo: Scott Lord

Books in our library written by ministers who have preached here

I wasn't looking for these. They are from a college from where I went to nursery school up to highschool in South Hamilton, Mass.

The church is historic and there is a cabinet of books written by minsters who have preached here at Park Street. When I looked for digitalized out of print I suprisingly didn't find anything. We are adjacent to the former offices of Little and Brown and I collect first edition Little and Brown hardcovers and often find them digitalized. What I did find were the student Theological journals from Gordon Conwell Seminary and are reading through them today, particularly an essay on the Futurity of the Resurrection in the writing of Paul.

Donna’s new dress I like

Happy Birthday, Donna

My wife's sixty second birthday was today. Although we went out for lunch yesterday and were in today waiting for snow, we've been watching movies. The Lost Daughter, Bright Star, a superb biographical film about the poet John Keats and Blue Jay in this group of movies. We kept the same ballon as last month, rather than getting her a birthday balloon, mostly because it is still in the same spot.

2022 Cambridge, Boston

We left Boston early New Years Eve for a view of the fireworks from the thirteenth floor. During remodeling, our terraces were removed, so I didn't photograph them. We had mostly been at Macy's. Donna brought Christmas cards with her to the church library this morning, which I appreciated being part of- there are old post cards of the church to the front of the library entrance and tonight I came across that her church was the tallest building in the United States between 1810 and 1828, which included the War of 1812. The Old North Church is visible from where Tremont Street begins and that had been the tallest building in the United States prior to that, ostensibly why Paul Revere decided upon it during the Revolutionary War. Again, Paul Revere, who in fact lived untill 1818, is buried in the church yard adjacent to Donna's library, where I had lunch this afternoon while she was working at the library desk, and the grave yard can be seen from a window that amounts to what is a glass wall overlooking it, the glass wall the size of an entire room. This is the church one hundred years later, in 1910.

If you look at the bottom postcard, there is a tree that is visible and Paul Revere is buried behind it and the glass wall room sized window is facing him, not visible from this view. Donna gave Christmas cards to the minister and his wife, whom we have only known shortly, there having been four, one might say six ministers that we have known that are no longer with the church, but this morning there were alao members that we have known for longer than five years. It made for a nice morning. I happenned to be reading about the difference between the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body and how the conception of spiritual, angelic intermediate states may have arouse from that discourse. I also came across a biography of Cotton Mather- almost pure biography other than the exhortation "to be Fruitful" and someone had left a bookmark with a watercolor of Harvard Yard on it.Our half a room size almost all glass room window, where we could see the New Years fireworks, faces in the opposite direction of Harvard Yard, thirteen floors higher than it, where I can just see what is possibly our church steeple from its tip and just barely what seems to be the gold dome of the State House.