The Episcopal Church of the Advocate
where tradition, liturgy and reason meet compassion, justice and transformation
On Friday, April 6 a hive of 12,000 bees were installed in their new hive on the north side of the Advocate Pond.
We can learn about bees, bee keeping, and the Advocate Church bees in particular, by following the blog, Glory Bees, found here.
Blog posts include:
An Introduction
The Queen
Pollen and Plants
For more about the Piedmont Patch, look here.
All are welcome and encouraged to join us
The Bees Are Coming!
The bee box is built and placed on the north end of the Pond. The hive arrives Friday, April 6. Our keeper and teacher, Gillian Hadden, will place the bees in the box at 5:45 that day. Come watch and learn!
Many enthusiastic volunteers are needed for the Piedmont Patch Planting Day on Saturday, April 14 (rain date April 21) from 9:00 a.m. to noon. Volunteers from the wider community are coming, and we hope to have many people of the Advocate present as well. Experience is NOT a prerequisite to participate: we’ll team newbies with experienced gardeners, so that the experience of all will be enriched. Because we’re planning for teams, your email RSVP is important. Let us know if you are a veteran gardener or a newbie and how many folks you’ll be bringing. We’ll provide drinks and snacks. Read more about the Planting Day here.
And mark your calendar now for the next Piedmont Patch education event on Saturday, May 19, 10:00am – 12 noon. “Container Gardening,” with Amy Brightwood, promises to introduce us to container gardening techniques and the therapeutic benefits of the practice, especially with families.
All are welcome to join in the fun, planting and learning about native flowers and grasses, Saturday April 14 (rain date April 21) 9 AM – noon.
For our next Piedmont Patch event, we will gather around the pond and transform the briars, invasive, sweet gum shouts and random pine shoots into a site of native flora. Plants will be a combination of those purchased with funds from our Stewardship of Creation grant from The Episcopal Church and native wildflowers transplanted from the abundant gardens of Cathy Bollinger, Volunteer Botanical Advisor to the project. If you are able to help dig plants from Cathy’s garden the day before, please either send an email to piedmontpatch@gmail.com
Refreshments and good fellowship provided. Please wear sturdy shoes, and bring work gloves,
Also…. don’t worry if you haven’t done much — or any — of this kind of work before. We’re in it to learn!
Rather than attempt a reading group or a free-wheeling conversation on such a complex and sensitive topic, we will invite folks to listen to a specific episode of this series prior to the TM. These podcast episodes are short (usually about 30 minutes), and they provide excellent historical perspective alongside frank reflections and friendly conversations. We expect listening to this series will be a convenient and doable way for us all to share a frame of reference as we think together.
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What Happens Easter “Day”? It begins Saturday after sunset…..
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[Holy Saturday at 10 AM, we gather in the chapel for a brief service of readings and prayers, to remember Jesus in the tomb and the Harrowing of Hell]According to our Gospel accounts, the resurrection took place in the dark of night with no witnesses. So for the Easter Vigil on Saturday night, we gather in the dark near the pond. We experience the excitement of the Light of Christ coming into the darkness as we light the Pashal fire, carry the Paschal candle in procession past kerosene soaked torches that burst into flame. Once in the Chapel, we hear the ancient Exultet chanted, and we keep vigil through the stories of creation and liberation. We remember our baptism through which we have been united with Christ, and we give the Paschal Shout, with bells and whistles, alleluias and a simple, celebratory dance.
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Easter Morning, the celebration continues!
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Easter Morning we celebrate the discovery of the resurrection – in the daylight — with beauty, joy, Eucharist. We’ve heard the story, now we live in the light of the resurrection. We cheer the ancient song: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb, bestowing life. And we dance.
On Good Friday the Church re-members the day of the crucifixion of Jesus. At the Advocate we will do this with three distinct practices.
At noon we will walk the Via Crucis, the Way of the Cross through the Town of Carrboro. The traditional 14 stations of the Way will be reinterpreted for our time and place, starting at the Carrboro Town Hall, where “Jesus is condemned to die” and ending in the old Carrboro Cemetery, where Jesus is laid in the tomb. Mindful of our neighbors whose first language is Spanish, and of the tradition of the Via Crucis in Central and South America, we will offer our prayers and meditations in English and in Spanish.
At 6 PM we will gather in the Advocate Chapel, 8410 Merin Road in north Chapel Hill, for the Good Friday Liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, with prayers, a homily, and hymns.
From 7 PM to 9 PM, we will hold the Good Friday Wake in the Chapel gathering as the friends of Jesus, remembering the one who has died. The time is divided into 30 minute segments. At 7PM we will have a simple soup supper. In each of the half hours that follow, we will have a time of readings, a time of conversation about Jesus, and a time of silent meditation. People can come and go on the half hour throughout the evening.
On the Thursday of Holy Week, also called Maundy Thursday, the Church universal remembers Jesus’ “last supper” with his disciples. Scripture tells us that they gathered in an “upper room” for the passover meal. They feasted and enjoyed one another’s fellowship. The frescos of Da Vinci at the Vatican and of Ben Long in Glendale Springs, NC, capture the intimacy and the complexity of that night.
A homily offered by Lacey A. Hudspeth at the Episcopal Church of the Advocate, Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018.
I love the story of Alice in Wonderland. The story of a small girl who falls into a hole where she must navigate many odd and even absurd events in order to find her way home.
I love it because in the story there is this constant need in it to press two different questions—questions about Alice’s character
and
questions about Alice’s mission:
This story of Palm Sunday is often one I have a difficult time with, because it involves a
feeling of triumphalism that makes me uncomfortable. Jesus rides into Jerusalem, the
political epicenter of the time, amidst people fawning palm branches before him saying,
“Hosanna!” which translates literally into “God save us”.
As I have thought this week about why this story makes me so uncomfortable, I have come to realize it is because there are other people in our own more recent American story who live into the political triumphalism, who are swayed by a group of people saying something similar to, “save us, we put our hope in you, God has sent you to us.” I have a difficult time with the nature of triumphalism— it comes across as arrogant, rooted in worldly success, and I find it confusing in the face of the Jesus that I have come to know— I think we have to do something similar to the characters in Alice in Wonderland this morning. We have to look inside the gospels and ask of this Jesus riding into Jerusalem
Who are you? and What is the purpose of this?
AND, ask ourselves… What IS IT that we are committing to when we kneel before someone and say, “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord ”
We must press Jesus on both who he is as a human and who he is as a God. Let’s look at this man we lay down palm branches for, a man we beg to save us.
Let’s look first at Jesus as a man. What is MOST unusual about Jesus, what sets him apart from other men is threefold:
1. His relationship to God
2. The shape and narrative of his life as teacher and justice seeker
3. His building relationships with outsiders, with the marginalized
As a man, Jesus very clearly sets himself outside of the triumphalist crowd. The palm branches mentioned in the gospel of John are meant to be reminiscent of the processions that greeted the political victories of the Maccabees.
But, Jesus quickly and clearly corrects this vision of himself as their political savior the people expected him to be— a man who rides into the epicenter on a jeweled chariot, a man who celebrates power.
Instead Jesus acts out a prophecy— he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey to show that, like the King promised in Zechariah, he has come to bring peace and salvation, NOT riches and political glory.
Jesus rides in on a donkey to say of his character:
I do not come to set up a hierarchy of power; I come humbly, a child born in a trough, a man riding in on a donkey, I am coming NOT to wield power over you, but rather the exact opposite— I have come to die for you, so that you may live.
Here we see the nature of Jesus as both human and as God.
Jesus, the man and the God, turns this triumphalism on its head. When the crowd tries to triumph the coming of Jesus as political-glory… Jesus instead celebrates what will be— the triumph of gratuitous love, the gift of the
Incarnation sent to gather us all into the mystery of the Trinity.
And when we press him, when we interrogate Scripture to more fully understand who he is as both fully human and fully divine, I think we come to know God as Pseudo Dionysius does— Jesus is the divine goodness who maintains and protects all creation and feasts on them with its good things.
At the core of Jesus’ humanity and divinity, Jesus is one who seeks and finds relationships— indeed, it is precisely through the incarnation— through the living work of Jesus present on earth as both fully human and fully divine—
We dont celebrate power.
We celebrate the mystery of God gathering us into the life of the Trinity.
When we look deeply into the character of the humanity and divinity of this God, we look deeply into the face of gratuitous love— love that is poured over each one of us without any regard for worthiness.
If we are like Alice, working through the absurdities of the world, trying to find our own way home— I think Jesus once more turns the questions around and looks at us and says,
Who are you? What do you believe?
What is your character and what is your mission?
How will you live out the gratuitous love I have shown you?
Will you be set apart by your love and relation to God?
Will you be set apart by your narrative of justice seeker?
and will you be set apart by building relationships with the marginalized?
These are the questions of Palm Sunday.
Amen and Amen.
The Prequel: Saturday, March 24
9 AM – Noon Site Stewardship morning: Come help get our ground ready for Holy Week and Easter. Many hands make light work!
Palm Sunday, March 25
+ Procession with Palms and Holy Eucharist. Gather at the Advocate Pond at 10:00 AM for the blessing of the palms, and flowers or branches brought from home. Procession followed by Holy Eucharist in the Chapel.
Monday of Holy Week, March 26
+ Tenebrae at 7 PM. We move into Holy Week with this service of growing darkness, readings and song. Music led by a visiting schola from Raleigh.
Tuesday of Holy Week, March 27
+ Holy Eucharist at 5:30 PM
Wednesday of Holy Week, March 28
+ Holy Eucharist at 5:30 PM
Maundy Thursday, March 29
+ Dinner fellowship (food provided), Foot-washing and Table Eucharist. In the Fleming Lodge at Camp New Hope. 6:30 PM. (Camp New Hope is on NC86, 3 miles north of the I40 – NC86 interchange)
Good Friday, March 30
+ The Way of the Cross/ Via Dolorosa. In Spanish and English. Beginning at 12 noon. Acompáñenos en peregrinaje desde la Alcaldia de Carrboro hasta el Cementerio Viejo (Beginning at Carrboro Town Hall, winding through Carrboro, and ending at the Old Cemetery. Through downtown Carrboro. Meet at Carrboro Town Hall. (no dogs, please).
+ The Good Friday Liturgy, with hymns, prayers, and the Passion from the Gospel of John. 6 PM in the Advocate Chapel.
+ The Wake. 7 PM – 9 PM. Gather with other friends of Jesus for a simple supper and to reminisce about his life and the experiences you have shared with him. Supper 7-7:30 PM. Each half hour, 7:30 – 9 PM will include readings, contemplative prayer, and shared reflection. Come on the hour or on the half hour and stay for any, or all, of the Wake.
Holy Saturday, March 31
+The Holy Saturday Liturgy at 10AM in the Advocate Chapel. Gather in the Chapel for this brief liturgy of readings, reflection and prayers.
10:30 AM Rehearsal and preparations for The Great Vigil.
Saturday Night, March 31
+ The Great Vigil of Easter with Renewal of Baptismal Vows. This is our first liturgy of Easter, when we celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord in the darkness of night. (As you are able, please bring a bell, horn or whistle to accompany the Paschal Shout). In the Advocate Chapel. Starting at 8 PM.
Easter Day, April 1
+ 9 AM Holy Eucharist in the Chapel.
+ 10 AM Festival Brunch (As you are able, bring a festive dish to share. Kids bring a basket for an Easter Egg hunt).
+ 11 AM Holy Eucharist by the Pond. Bring your own chairs or blanket to sit upon.
Weather updates will be posted as needed.
This Lent, The Episcopal Church of the Advocate invites our neighbors and friends, known and unknown, to participate in the ancient practice of prayer and reflection called the Stations of the Cross, around the Advocate Pond. Traditionally, the fourteen stations mark different events on the path that Jesus walked through the city of Jerusalem on the day of his death, from the house of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, where he was condemned to die, to the hill at Golgatha, where he was crucified. At each station, participants pause for a reading from scripture, a prayer, and a time of meditation.
From early times, each of the fourteen stations has been marked by a Roman numeral. At The Advocate, we have localized the stations by using discarded railroad spikes from the nearby tracks for the numerals, and affixing them to reclaimed local barn boards.
A booklet of the fourteen stations, with prayer and scripture readings, as well as an olive wood cross to carry as you go, are available in a box under the well house roof. The first station is just to the east of the altar (towards the railroad tracks), and the stations proceed counterclockwise around the pond, ending with the fourteenth station just to the west of the altar.
The Stations may be walked and prayed at any time by any one. All are welcome.