Author: vicar

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People

Meet Susan Ruggles

 

12-13-07-002

 

Susan likes to say that when she first started attending Holy Cross we had just installed indoor plumbing! Besides serving as one of our “memory repositories” (she is on the parish history task force) and as head of the Altar Guild, Susan is currently serving on the Vestry as our Diocesan Liaison chair. Combined with her role as one of our delegates to Diocesan Convention, this means that she is responsible for all of the ways in which we interface with diocesan programs: Safer Church minister, coordinator of the Gifts to Children of Prison Inmates program, and more. Susan retired at the end of 2008 (hurray!) has a grown daughter and son, and an adorable granddaughter who sometimes comes to church with her. She’s pictured knitting a prayer shawl for our prayer shawl ministry–through which we give comforting shawls to those in the congregation or the wider community who are ill or facing surgery.

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Lent 3 March 15, 2009

Exodus 20:1-17                                                                  

1 Corinthians 1:18-25                                                       

John 2:13-22

 

“On his first day of eighth grade at the former Holy Name Roman Catholic school in Washington, DC, last fall, Jeffrey Stone bowed his head, clasped his hands and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Within seconds, his teacher chided him: ‘We don’t do that anymore.’”*

 

Holy Name, like six other financially troubled schools in our Nation’s capitol, was turned into a charter school over the summer last year.

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People

Meet our “organ scholar,” Mary Copeley

Six or seven years ago one of our musicians, the folk singer Douglas Clegg, suggested that Holy Cross begin a program of supporting an “organ scholar.” Organ scholars would be teenagers who wanted to take organ lessons–the organ being the most difficult and sophisticated instrument a musician can aspire to play. Since organists are something of a dying breed, we thought Douglas had a great idea. His suggestion was taken up enthusiastically by our other two organists, Liz Black and Roberta Walmsley.

Our first organ scholar was a John Stark High School junior, Erik Boyko. Erik started organ lessons, with scholarship aid from Holy Cross, and began to play at church–first one piece, then several, finally whole services. We watched as he grew in competence and were both joyful and sad when he went away to college at the University of Chicago. (Erik graduated two years ago and is now an artisanal bread baker in Boston.)

Mary at the console of the Holy Cross organ.
Mary at the console of the Holy Cross organ.

Our second organ scholar is Mary Copeley. Mary is a home-schooled high schooler, looking towards a career in organ. She is one dedicated and accomplished young lady, having been selected in a natinal competition last year for a summer “organ experience” intensive music camp–one of just 20 young people to be chosen. Lest you think organists are some sort of weird wonks, know that Mary also plays in a rock group, enjoys sports, and otherwise exhibits the marks of a regular teenager. Mary is a faithful member of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Manchester, so she often does double duty, fitting in service there as well as at Holy Cross.

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Outreach

Support of MDG Work in Africa

For the past two years, Holy Cross has sent an amount equal to 0.7% of its income to support two aid and development projects in Africa.

KWIHEED supports microentrepreneurs like this woman, selling produce in the marketplace.
KWIHEED supports microentrepreneurs like this woman, selling produce in the marketplace.

The first is WINHEEDCAM, formerly known as KWIHEED, a microcredit development agency operating in Cameroon. It was founded by Concord doctor Munro Proctor, who found in the course of medical mission work that economic development was the foundational need of rural people in Cameroon. With Dr. Proctor’s retirement, his work has been taken over by an organization called endPoverty.org, which is a funding and oversight operation for a dozen or more locally based development projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The transfer will enable the continuation and expansion of the wonderful work WINHEEDCAM has done over the years.

The second project we support is Masiphumele Corporation. Masiphumele operates in one of the poor townships outside of Capetown, South Africa. It provides leadership, organizational skills, training, and other support to community leaders engaged in home building, education, and other community activities. Like KWIHEED, Masiphumele has New Hampshire connections. It is the child of a Granite State couple who also have a home in South Africa.

Both the national Episcopal Church and the Diocese of New Hampshire have endorsed the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations, which call for devoting 0.7% of budgets at every level of society in developed countries to help the developing nations of the world attain educational, health and social goals by 2015.

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Lent 2 March 8, 2009

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16                                                        

Romans 4:13-25                                                                

Mark 8:31-38

 

When I moved here to start as vicar, going on twelve years ago, I was new to email. (Sounds impossible to believe! Now email is being eclipsed by Facebook and Twitter.) I picked as my email address holyx, for Holy Cross. I didn’t realize that I could have used a plus sign instead of the x and had an address that avoided negative connotations.

 

Anyway, it’s occurred to me sometimes that X is an interesting take on the Cross. (Actually, the crosses used in crucifixion apparently weren’t like the Latin crosses we’re used to seeing. They were tau or T-shaped. And some crosses were actually X shaped, the victim’s hands and legs stretched out more painfully.) But the thing about X and the Cross is that “X marks the spot,” X is the intersection of space and time, X is the cross-hairs in a gun sight. And all of that is true of the Cross of Christ, the Holy Cross, the namesake of this church.

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About Holy Cross Believing and Belonging

Membership at Holy Cross

We welcome a newly baptized member of the Household of God.
We welcome a newly baptized member of the Household of God.

Membership means different things in different churches. In the Episcopal Church it’s very simple. To be a member you have to be baptized and you have to have your name recorded on the membership rolls of the church. That’s all! You’re in! If you haven’t been baptized, the vicar will be glad to discuss baptism with you. If you were baptized in a different denomination, the Episcopal Church accepts your baptism; baptism is once-and-for-all, we don’t rebaptize.

On another level, membership is not so simple.

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Outreach

Holy Cross Supports Weare Food Pantry

These are hard times for many folks, and we’re making a special effort at Holy Cross to support the Weare Food Pantry. The Pantry currently serves almost 100 families each month. It is located in the Weare Middle School and is open Wednesdays from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Holy Cross collects nonperishable items every Sunday, bringing them to the Altar as a special offering on the fourth Sunday of each month. Perishable items (margarine, cheese) can now also be brought on Sundays and placed in the small refrigerator under the sink off the Gathering Space. They will be delivered to the Pantry.

Pantry volunteers pose before a recent Wednesday session.
Pantry volunteers pose before a recent Wednesday session.

 

The Pantry now has a toy cupboard as well.
The Pantry now has a toy cupboard as well.
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About Holy Cross

Baptism at Holy Cross

Bishop Arthur Walmsley prepares to chrismate a newly baptized infant.
Bishop Arthur Walmsley prepares to chrismate a newly baptized infant.

Often parents of new babies or young children in the area inquire about baptism. The Episcopal Church baptizes infants and children as well, of course, as adults. Holy Baptism is a sacrament of commitment to the life of Christ. It constitutes membership in the Church, the Household of God, and entitles one to receive Holy Communion and the other sacraments. In the case of children who are too young to make the baptismal commitment on their own, this is done for them by their parents and godparents.

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About Holy Cross

Marriage at Holy Cross

Marriage is a sacrament and a life, not just a wedding.
Marriage is a sacrament and a life, not just a wedding.

So you’re planning to get married! That’s wonderful. In the Episcopal Church, Holy Matrimony is a sacrament involving a solemn, lifelong commitment. Part of this commitment is the expectation that the couple–or at least one of them–will be an active member of the faith community, at Holy Cross or elsewhere. Marriage in the Episcopal Church also entails a course of preparation. At Holy Cross that means meeting with the Vicar to explore and discuss important areas of the marital relationship–working out differences, handling finances, raising children, sex, roles, expectations. It also involves planning the ceremony and talking about the meaning of its various parts. We want to work out a wedding that speaks to the couple’s values and dreams, while being consistent with the theology of Christian Marriage in the Episcopal Church.

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Outreach

Millennium Development Goals

Holy Cross commits 0.7% of its income to organizations that work abroad to realize the Millennium Development Goals adopted by the United Nations and endorsed by the Episcopal Church.

Bishop Arthur Walmsley, a member of Holy Cross, recently spoke about the connection between the Gospel and the MDG’s.

Excerpts from an address at Trinity Church, Concord, MA, on February 22, 2009.
 

The vision of the Millennium Development Goals is not new. For people who draw their faith from the Bible, it is as old as scripture. There is a Biblical mandate to serve God’s mission … and scripture offers us an understanding of the global crisis which has the potential to move us beyond the paralysis of the present to an affirmation and a way of being grounded in hope.

The doorway to this understanding starts with Jesus.

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