Bede’s Bog Brigade

In January 2009, with the support of Palo Alto Park Ranger Daren Anderson, St. Bede’s adopted a small plot of marshland at the Palo Alto Baylands for the purpose of wetland restoration. Primary needs at this site are invasive plant removal and the planting of native plant species. Between February and November, 2009, a small group of parishioners met at least one Saturday a month to tackle the invasive mustard plant, a nonnative plant that offers little to no value to the marshland and that spreads rapidly thereby inhibiting the growth of native plant species that do offer nutrition to the soil and protection for marshland wildlife. We pulled both small and three-foot tall mustard plants with the result of a decrease in the density of the mustard plant in our assigned plot.

In November, Ranger Daren made arrangements with Save the Bay for St. Bede’s to plant native gum plants (Grindelia stricta), a ground cover that provides protection and food for native wildlife. In January of 2010, for two consecutive weekends, St. Bede’s parishioners planted and mulched 200 gum plants that were grown in the native plant nursery at the Palo Alto Baylands that is managed by Save the Bay, an environmental organization based in Oakland CA that is dedicated to the protection and restoration of the San Francisco Bay and oversees the restoration efforts at the Palo Alto Baylands.

In 2010, St. Bede’s will work with Ranger Daren and Save the Bay on planting native plants (gum plant) and continuing to remove the non-native, invasive mustard.

Check out this entertaining,

sing-along Bede’s Bog slideshow!

Sermon: Plucking and Planting

Listen. What do you think? Would God want us to have this conversation with those around us, those who won’t talk in church terms? Would Jesus want us to roll up our sleeves, alongside others, to become the tipping point in an alternative way of living, to preserve the earth for our descendents? What a fine way to conceive our vocation. People don’t see what difference religion makes for good. Here’s a good way.

Last Sunday, in Soulwork, we talked about the power of God’s Word, echoing through time, convincing the faithful to live according to God’s dream for the world. Countless have heard and heeded God’s word, spoken through Jeremiah and Isaiah, in the passages appointed today. And countless carry in their hearts Paul’s hymn to love.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. Before you were born I consecrated you. I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Thus says the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah. We can read this passage in relation to the child Bede, fostered by monks, as he considered his calling. It was an ambitious undertaking to write The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. To do such a thing, Bede had to take such a passage seriously, and  he had to appreciate the vocation of his own people too.

Now let’s apply the call of Jeremiah to our congregation, bearing Bede’s name. The passage asks us to reflect upon how the Spirit is forming us, how we are being grown in faith and practice, how we are being asked to serve in a particular time and place, and in communion with Bede, Luke, Paul, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, to name just a few.

Nuclear Tipping Point

The documentary film, Nuclear Tipping Point,

was previewed and discussed by The Honorable George Shultz at St. Bede’s on November 5, 2009. The film premiers today in Hollywood and is available on DVD and for download at this site.

Sermon: Wrestling with Angels

Like Jacob wrestling with an angel, we are called to think and ponder God’s words until we recognize God’s continuing presence in our lives.

After all this rain, I feel a little like Garrison Keeler and his hometown, Lake Woebegone. For I feel we’ve just lived through an unsettling couple of weeks,
I knew something was off Thursday night when the rain stopped. I checked the weather radar and saw I had just enough time to walk to the park and move one of our cars so it wouldn’t be towed as part of Alameda’s street sweeping income program. I was right: the rain held off until I made it home. But as I was walking across the park toward the parked car I heard the telltale sound of sprinkler heads popping up out of the ground.
Then came the “psspft…psspft…psspft” heralding the progression of the sprinkler’s pulsating spray straight towards me. As I ran across the waterlogged lawn I thought: “Something’s just not right about this.” If only my being chased across a sodden lawn by a sprinkler was the worst of it.

Sermon: Water & Fire

If Jesus is the brightest star, then the baptized are like the Milky Way, a vast constellation of witnesses.

We’ve just been through two weeks of Christmas stories. It comes as something of a shock to flip suddenly, from wise ones bearing gifts at midweek, to Jesus and John grown up in the Jordan River. What happened in between?! One thing the sudden shift does highlight for us is that the birth and infancy stories are told in the service of the person Jesus became as a man.

The star that illuminated the manger scene becomes a descending dove. The angels singing on high become the voice of God. In both sets of stories, birth and baptism, heaven is communicating with earth about a particular person, chosen by God for a particular service to benefit humankind.

Sermon: Hopes & Fears of All the Years

Christmas Eve 2009

Here’s how we’ll know that God is still actively engaged in the work of salvation…God keeps sending babies!

The church, in its wisdom, has selected this particular prophecy of Isaiah for the observance of this holy night. It’s an oracle of hope, looking forward to a time when a faithful leader will make possible an extended period of peace. Who wouldn’t want that? Don’t we still? After listening to the posturing and wrangling in congress, such leadership sounds heavenly to me. The oracle is delivered to the people of Isaiah’s time, who  are said to be casting about in the dark. They can’t see their way forward. The promised leader will illuminate the best path ahead. That remains a perennial hope for good governance in all the world.

Gingerbread House Decorating 2009

On Sunday, December 6th Bede’s Kids enjoyed the Annual Gingerbread House Decorating Party. Kids of all ages enjoyed creative stickiness in the Great Hall. Thanks to Claudia Geoly for organization and photography! Click on the link to enjoy a great slideshow!

Gingerbread Houses

Sermon: On Fire in Shalom

3 Advent, December 13, 2009

Think of them as anecdotes shared around a family dinner table. This is how great Uncles Zephaniah and Isaiah used to tell the story. This is how Uncle Luke and Uncle Paul told it.

Stir up your power, O God. And stir us up too. Stir up your power working in us! The problem with the collect is that we sound so helpless. Yes, by ourselves we can do little. God is our renewable resource. Yet God saves us to help assist a wider salvation. It may be one of our greatest failings and easiest outs to assume that we are sorely hindered. That’s the point John the Baptist is making to the crowd that has come from Jerusalem into the wilderness to see what he’s about.

Sermon: Arise, Shine

Is it, “Jesus is coming, duck and cover,” or “here comes Jesus, alleluia, stand up and shout?”

1 Advent, November 29, 2009

Jeremiah 33:14-16, Psalm 25:1-9, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36
As we commence the season of Advent, we pray for grace to put on the armor of light. This is the season in which we mortals anticipate the last day, the end of life as we know it. What are we to make of these images? Armor is used as protection in battle. With whom are we in conflict? What is the nature of this light we are to wear as a shimmering coat of maille? Let us take the questions to the scriptures appointed.

Jeremiah recommends expectant preparation to Israel, anticipating the end of dispersion and exile. He foretells a coming age, when God’s promise to Judah and Jerusalem is fulfilled by a succession of upright rulers. The continuity of the social order will issue in a reign of peace and prosperity. When this new creation comes to pass, Jerusalem will be given a new name, called The Lord is Our Righteousness. This can mean, simultaneously and variously, the Lord has done right by us, it is God who has put us right, and we honor and obey God in upright living. A new and right relationship pertains, among God, the people, and their leadership, with the consequence that life tend towards its right unfolding. Mortal life is back on track and headed in the right direction, godward.

Sermon: The Bread of Fidelity

If we take Genesis seriously, we remember that God had a relationship with the flora and fauna before we were created. They have seniority in creation.

Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2009

Joel 2:21-27, Psalm 126, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, Matthew 6:25-33
Reading ecology has changed my ways of seeing and hearing. I love the lessons for Thanksgiving. This year, we’re using a refined lectionary, and I’m hearing different dimensions of meaning. Of course, it’s always about what we call redemption, the restoration of creation and its community. Scripture tells us that is God’s hope for the world in Jesus.

At this time of year, harvest time, as we celebrate the plenitude of our lives, we are asked to take stock of our resources. What have we sown? What are we putting up into storerooms? What are we plowing under? Who’s invited? What’s served?

At This Church, Parishioners Wear Collars, Too

When a Los Angeles pastor decided his church needed a boost in membership, he did a little soul-searching and decided man’s best friend should be part of the fold. Read/listen to this NPR story!

Women’s Fall Retreat

An ancient African tale holds that before each child is born they are given their own special song. After the child’s birth, the community of family and village teach them their song. In times of crisis or distress in the life of a person, others sing that song to them to help them remember who they are.

We are God’s children and God sings our song to bring us back to who we are in times of uncertainty or confusion. Our song is heard in the events of everyday life, if we listen to our life with the awareness of how God communicates with us. Discernment in the experience of both natural and preternatural events can be learned. This retreat combined ancient spiritual practice, small groups, large groups, time for art/or journaling and laughter.

We met at the Presentation Center, Los Gatos: a lovely peaceful venue that used to be home to a community of nuns, the Sisters of the Presentation. While the program ran from late Friday afternoon to the end of Saturday afternoon, with accommodation and meals, a few women returned home for the Friday night. View slideshow.

Breaking Bread at Bede’s Dinner & Lecture Series

“Great Expectations:

The Washington Consensus, the Stock Market, and the Promise of Prosperity in the Developing World”

— Peter Blair Henry —

Stanford University Konosuke Matsushita
Professor of International Economics

Thursday, November 19th, 6:30pm in the Great Hall

Suggested Donation is $12.00 RSVP jwhall@stbedesmenlopark.org

Sermon: Twas Blind But Now

21 Pentecost, Proper 25, October 25, 2009

Let’s begin by looking at the premise of the collect for today. Then we’ll use it as a lens, to view the lessons. In it, the church prays for the action of grace to increase within and among us. We ask for spiritual growth, in the exercise of faith, hope, and love. Translate faith as trust. It’s not so much about tenets of belief as about the willingness to risk godly living. And translate charity as altruistic love, born of compassion. To make the translations helps us to understand what we are requesting.

Although these godly virtues are gifts, we are asking for their increase, not for their own merit, but as means to an end. We request their growth in us, so that we may obtain what God promises. The implication is that, somehow, their exercise effectively contributes to their fulfillment. As we grow in these graces, they assist our godly aim. It means that trust, hope, and love, besides being spiritual graces, are also spiritual powers.

Will Dickens In Memoriam

All Saints Day, 2009

Homily by The Rector

Life is an awesome gift, with its inherent and inescapable freedom and responsibility. No one can relieve us of the privilege and gravity of our lives. We can love each other, care for each other, offer guidance and support to each other. But each of us must make something of our lives, and we remain answerable for our choices. Life is an awesome gift.

Will Dickens’ departure from us is a grievous loss. We are still shocked and stunned. We had no indication that he was in distress. As often as the questions return, we will never know what he was feeling or exactly what happened. Neither will we know if there might have been anything any of us might have done differently that might have changed the outcome. We must let the questions go as readily as they come.

What we do know and can say is that Will was a joy and delight to us. His life, besides being a gift to him, was also a gift to us. While we wish we could have had him with us longer, we are grateful for the time he was with us. We thank heaven for his indelible selfhood, for his boisterous company, for his signature grin.

Life is not easy, nor is it altogether benign. Terrible things happen. Sorrow abounds. Despair is a ready resort. Evil is real. We bear the collective load of human error all the time. It can get us down.

Documentary Film

Nuclear Tipping Point

followed by discussion with

The Honorable George Shultz

Thursday, November 5th, 4-6pm at St. Bede’s

Nuclear Tipping Point was produced by the Nuclear Security Project to raise awareness about nuclear threats and to help build support for the urgent actions needed to reduce nuclear dangers.
The 50-minute documentary film features former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn as they share the personal experiences that led them to write two Wall Street Journal op-eds in support of a world free of nuclear weapons and the steps needed to get there. Their efforts have reframed the global debate on nuclear issues and, according to the New York Times, have “sent waves through the global policy establishment.”
The film is introduced by General Colin Powell, narrated by actor Michael Douglas and includes interviews with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
For more information about the Nuclear Security Project, please visit
Nuclear_Security_Project_Home.htm

Arts at St. Bede’s presents

Requiem Mass in the Octave of All Souls

Choirs of St. Bede’s & Christ Church, Portola Valley

Presented at Christ Church, Portola Valley

Directed by Jane McDougle and Matthew Burt

Friday, November 6th,  7:30pm

John Rutter’s, Requiem (1985) is a beautiful, contemporary setting of the ancient texts for choir, soloists, and a small band of instruments. All are welcome at this lovely service, and will be invited to submit names of those to be remembered. Free will offering.

Choral Evensong for the First Sunday of Advent
St. Bede’s Choir with Jane McDougle and Rani Fischer
Sunday, November 29th, 5pm

Marking the turn of the church’s year into the rich and complex season of Advent is a wonderful opportunity for celebration in words and music. Focussing our attention on the witness of the prophets to the forthcoming birth of the Messiah, our Evensong will include things both ancient and modern. Christmas is coming: join with us in remembering the journey of the light from the darkness. The music will be from the Renaissance, with the choir’s Introit will be “Rorate coeli” by Jacobus Handl, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis from Orlando Gibbons’ Short Service, and the anthem will be “Veni Domine” by Spanish composer Juan Esquivel.
Free will offering

Post your own video question to John Mather: 2006 Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

“If You Wish to Make an Apple Pie From Scratch…”

“…You must first invent the universe.”

Here’s Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, prophets of our own time, in song.