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