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Block Print by Mike Newman
Projects
Make each child a winner this fall: donate school supplies 
Check out this school list here, bring them into the church and Fred will deliver to Bowling Green Elementary School. Deadline is Sept 1. According to the Free Lance-Star, the average family spends $635 preparing for the school year, so your donations make a difference.
St. Peter’s Gardens, Part 1
From "God’s Garden" by Dorothy Frances Blomfield Gurney (1858-1932)
We asked people to submit pictures of their gardens recently. The truth is that people love to share the products of their gardens with others – flowers and fruit. What do these gardens look like ? Why are people so passionate about them ?
This week we spotlight Cookie and Johnny’s garden which is one of the largest gardens in the parish.
See Cookie and Johnny’s Garden
Gardens are another example of our community together. They bring people together over the produce, flowers and beauty they create. They bring people together in the process it takes to bring them into fulfillment. In many cases, a seed or a sprig is shared which prospers over time. They bring people together even talking about the critters that take from our gardens! Beyond that it is a sense of wonder and amazement how seeds you can put in your hand grow to be fruits and flowers.
Gardens figure prominently in the Bible. Gardens were prevalent during Bible History, when they were often enclosed within a wall of earth or stone, or a hedge, and guarded by a watchman as protection against animals and thieves. Frequently used as places of worship and prayer (by the righteous, and by pagans), gardens were also used as a spiritual analogy for God’s blessings upon believers, or for the unbeliever’s fruitlessness. Gardens were sometimes used as burial places, a somewhat appropriate irony, since the dead are like sown seeds with the potential of new life e.g. "Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!"
They can be sorted out in four functions and related to a Bible verse:
Don’t see your pet ? Upload a picture . Update 8/21/2013. Terri uploaded 3 pets. Look for Dawn, Buffy and Irene.
Prayer requests – Add a name to the prayer list here.
Busy Week! August 18, 2013 (full size gallery)
VBS Links: 1. Vacation Bible School 8/12 2. Vacation Bible School 8/13 3. Vacation Bible School 8/14
August 25- 11:00pm, Morning Prayer, Rite II
This Sunday at St. Peter’s – Servers, Readings
Lectionary this week -"A Kingdom that Can’t be Shaken"
Here is the scripture from Luke 13:10-17 for this week
Jesus continues on the road to Jerusalem but there is a change in venue. Jesus had been speaking to disciples and large crowds. Now, he appears in "one of the synagogues." His presence in a synagogue is his first since leaving Galilee, and he will not visit another in Luke’s gospel. The conflict with Jewish leaders he will experience then is foreshadowed this story.
Jesus enters the synagogue and he seems to be in search of something. Just before this scene, Luke records a parable in which Jesus’ vineyard owner says, “For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none” (Luke 13:7). His sensitivity is heightened as he continues to search for “fig trees” that are bearing fruit.
He enters the synagogue immediately following this parable and will heal a Jewish lady who has been suffering for 18 years. Jesus heals the woman in sacred space (a synagogue, mentioned twice) and within sacred time, namely on a Sabbath (noted no fewer than five times), and he is criticized for this breach of the law. Jesus insists that the synagogue and the Sabbath are not the only things that are holy — so is this woman’s life. He is also guilty of touching a ritually unclean woman in their eyes. Jesus isn’t abolishing the Law of Moses, but helping the people in the synagogue have a better understanding of how to apply the law.
This isn’t his first healing in Luke. Earlier, in Chapter 4, Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit. In Chapter 6, he healed a man whose hand was withered. On both occasions, Luke describes Jesus teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, but we are not informed about the content of his teaching. On both occasions, prominent religious leaders take offense at Jesus’ actions because of their view of what is allowable on the holy Sabbath day. By the end of chapter 13, Jesus’ search will turn into lament, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…” (cf. 13:34-35).
Jesus’ rebuttal is clever, for while untying an ox or a donkey on the sabbath was forbidden in one part of the Mishnah (a Jewish book of laws), it was permitted in another. His point is that the woman is far more important than animals, yet animals are allowed more freedom on the sabbath than is the woman. This woman is a "daughter of Abraham," heir to the same promise as Abraham.
Note the story is not about his teaching or even the faith of the people. Both stories are healing stories but, more significantly, for Luke, is the controversy these healings created due to questions of Jesus’ Sabbath practices. He doesn’t argue about Judaism, or the restriction.
So what is it all about ?
Plain Ole’ St. Peter’s, 1979
The outside we see at St. Peter’s is a stucco covering of the original brick underneath which was revealed in 1979 when the Vestry decided to restucco the church rather than to remove it permanently. Apparently, there was some discussion then on which way to go. It appears the idea was to make the stucco stronger.
Was the stucco original to the building in 1836 or put on later ? The consensus is that it was added after the 1849 fire. Ralph Fall thinks it was added later after the construction of the church. He states in Hidden Village in 1849 that the “unstuccoed brick structure suffered considerable damage.” Jim Patton isn’t sure but in a letter to E. Conway Davis in 1979 he says it could have been added in 1850 to cover “the scars and patching" and thus favored restuccoing the church. There is also brick work around the portico that is different from the original that shows it may have been placed later.
Stucco was a choice in early part of the 19th century but its use was not universal. James Patton’s home at Gay Mont had on the west walls stucco that was designed in 1820 and 1839 by Benjamin Latrobe. Latrobe designed stucco over brick in churches like St. John’s Washington and St. Paul’s Alexandria. Other church buildings were more plain without stucco.
The 1849 damage was described in an newspaper article attached to the minute book– flames spread over the roof and reached steeple. The steeple and bell and organ destroyed. It was then the George Stevens organ was purchased. In 1868 after a lightning attach the steeple and bell were removed and the “present gable roof without a steeple was constructed.” There was much less damage. Was it due to the stucco or more localized nature of the lightning strike?
Stucco is a material made of water and sand or limestone. It is used for finishing the exterior of a building, and can be applied over almost any surface. Stucco is cheap, versatile and can be found in almost every color.
As a weather-repellent coating, stucco protected the building from wind and rain penetration, and also offered a certain amount of fire protection. It was an inexpensive material that could simulate finely dressed stonework. By the nineteenth century "stucco," although originally denoting fine interior ornamental plasterwork, had gained wide acceptance in the United States to describe exterior plastering.
Up until the late 1800s, stucco, like mortar, was primarily lime-based. Before the mid-to-late nineteenth century, stucco consisted primarily of hydrated or slaked lime, water and sand, with straw or animal hair included as a binder.
The popularization of portland cement changed the composition of stucco, as well as mortar, to a harder material. Portland cement was first manufactured in the United States in 1871, and it gradually replaced natural cement. After about 1900, most stucco was composed primarily of portland cement, mixed with some lime. With the addition of portland cement, stucco became even more versatile and durable. There were a number of additives (mud ,clay, waxes, fats, oils, varnish, sugar) that added to the strength and durability of the stucco.
The idea of strengthening the stucco was appealing in 1979. Patton urged the Vestry to go slow on the project.
In late 1979, the stucco was removed and as Fall writes “preparatory to placing a new cement-mix mixture of over the brick-work; the finished work was painted in a ‘sand-shade covering.’”
For a time in December, 1979 St. Peter’s resembled the church 140 years earlier albeit a few modifications.
Jim Patton’s St. Peter’s file has a envelope of both color and black and white pictures with many closeups. These are far superior to the pictures in Hidden Village which are taken further away from the brick. Patton also labeled the pictures where they were taken. These may be the only ones available for this renovation.
What did they find when they removed the stucco ?
St. Bartholomew, the Apostle, August 24
Bartholomew was one of the earliest apostles of Jesus. He has been associated with the name "Nathaniel" only by the process of elimination with other apostles. The Gospel of John introduces him as a friend of Phillip.
Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History claims that following the ascension he traveled in mission to India where he left behind a Gospel of Matthew. Along with Jude, Bartholomew is said to have brought Christianity to Armenia. He was executed for allegedly converting the Armenian King Polymius to Christianity.