All Saints Gazette: The Time Being
Greetings from All Saints! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas season! I did, but it’s good to be back. Upcoming:
Every weekday (M t/m V) at 9:00 and 18:00: Morning and Evening Prayer on Zoom (see our calendar for the links)
Next Sunday Worship: 19 January
The season after Epiphany is one of those in-between things that nobody quite knows what to do with. It is “ordinary time” in that it doesn’t belong to any season, but unlike the much longer period of ordinary time from the day after Pentecost to the beginning of Advent, it isn’t really long enough for one to settle in and feel ordinary. One remembers Christmas, perhaps with mixed feelings. And one is aware of the approach of Lent (which will still somehow manage to sneak up on all the clergy you know). It’s still winter (meteorologically, it’s finally winter), but the days at least slowly lengthen. And though there is not officially any theme to the time, the church tends to set before us images and stories of created things being or becoming more than created things: water (Jesus’ baptism), festival (the wedding at Cana), speech (Jesus teaching), fish, a life struggling for justice, and light. That’s kind of what we’re about: a transitional time that is and isn’t ordinary, ordinary things being made holy, and in the words of W.H. Auden, the holy task: the Time Being to be redeemed from insignificance.
The following is the concluding narration from Auden’s Christmas poem, “For the Time Being”:
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph.
Daily Prayer
The rhythms and rituals that make Sunday worship awesome continue beyond Sunday! Our Anglican tradition offers a form of morning and evening prayer that lets us encounter God with our bodies and minds. You’ll find it in the prayer book, online in several places, and you can join us every weekday morning and evening and 9:00 and 18:00 on Zoom. Note that while Mpho is on vacation next week, there won’t be someone on Zoom everyday, but you can always use the link. I (Kyle) will let you know when I plan to be there. Link on the church calendar.
Thursdays and Other Gatherings and Outings
This is a reminder that, for the time being, we are just doing evening prayer as our Thursday programming. What ideas do you have for things we can do together, and when?
Beloved Community and Racial Justice
Here is a save-the-date from the Convocation’s ministry of Racial Justice and Beloved Community, led by Mpho, for an online forum on 22 February at 10:00. You can sign up and read more here!
Pledge Drive
While we’re saving dates, get primed for our upcoming pledge drive. We are grateful for everyone’s financial gifts to our community and are working hard to get the structure in place for tax-deductible giving in the Netherlands. When we have that, we will invite you to make a commitment to give a certain amount (of your choosing) this year. You can always give whether you pledge or not, but a strong pledge base both helps us grow, plan, and show the wider church and the world what this community means to us. Membership and participation in our community will ALWAYS be free.
Holy Days in 2025
There is an old tradition of announcing the dates of the year’s moveable feasts on Epiphany. Sometimes it’s chanted quite solemnly. Here’s the text my friend the Rev. Devin McLachlan used at his parish in Cambridge, UK:
Investing in the Community We Want
Keep investing in the community you want, in the person you want to be, and in what God is doing among us. Use the QR code or this link, or make a transfer through your banking app (the latter saves us a few cents). Please consider making your offering recurring, and pray about what you are called to pledge when we have our winter pledge drive.
Bank details
All Saints Amsterdam
IBAN NL32 TRIO 0320 8657 62
BIC TRIONL2U
Performances of Auden
The poem I quoted from at the beginning is an “oratorio” meant to be set to music, but it never was. Still, there performances of the whole thing, such as this video:
The final chorus has also been set to music and is included in the Episcopal hymnal. It’s not an easy tune, and I’ve never heard it sung in church. But here’s a recording of it:
That’s all for Today! Want to talk to a priest? We want to talk to you too!
Website: https://allsaintsamsterdam.church
Mpho: mpho@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Kyle: kyle@allsaintsamsterdam.church
General: info@allsaintsamsterdam.church
Instagram: @allsaintsamsterdam.church
