Church Happenings and Poetry Teas

For someone who is feeling deeply ambivalent about organized religion - especially politically charged denominations of the Christian Variety - I am doing an awful lot that is involved with them.

For starters, this past Sunday my mother and I were invited to take part in a Poetry Tea hosted by the Christian Education committee of a local Presbyterian Church where several friends attend. Our joint contribution was originally going to be only the centerpiece, but after the challenge of sixteen or so centerpieces for my wedding last September we felt rather an anticlimax once this one was planned out so we went whole hog and did the china place settings, flowers, and some sweets as well.

Since this was a tea based around people getting together to recite poetry we looked through all of our old books and came up with two beauties, which we accented with a beeswax candle in a silver holder, my Great-Great-Grammie Webster's silver teapot, a crystal bud vase from the last local crystal producer to the area my family is from, a teacup from my wedding china, an antique ink bottle and silver dip pen.


At each place setting (we chose to use my wedding china because it matched the blue and brown color scheme suggested by the books) we decorated the napkin with a rose, blue statice, and some gypsophilia.

My mother also provided some gingerbread petit fours and sugar cookie bookmarks while I offered shortbread made from my grandmother's recipe using lavender sugar.

As if this lovely afternoon wasn't enough of being up to my eyeballs in church, Tuesday I am going with my mother and others from around the diocese on a bus trip to the General Convention for the Episcopal Church.

I am hoping to run into some friends from my past endeavors - I was blessed to be a part of the Cathedral staff in Boston the year Bishop Barbara Harris retired and Bishop Gayle Harris was consecrated. It was a truly amazing experience for this girl who, at the time, didn't even know that we had women bishops and was still in a church where the rector referred to female clergy as "women in priest's clothing". You can't tell me there isn't a world of difference between the East and West coast churches! I hope to share some of my experiences when I return.