"Good Shepherd and Landscape, 1909" panels of stained glass photos used with permission granted by the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass and Collection of The New York Historical Society.
If most of us were to do a word-association game with “Easter” we would probably come up with words like: spring, flowers, bunnies, eggs, and (I hope) Resurrection. My own first memories of Easter have very little to do with church; Easter was about spending the day with relatives, wearing new a frilly new dress and shiny new shoes, and most of all it was about the enormous See’s Candy Rocky Road Easter egg that Aunt Mary always gave to each of the children in the family. They were more like ostrich eggs than hen’s eggs, and we could slice it up and make it last for a week at least. Now I’m quite sure that we went to church on Easter, but nothing in my memory can distinguish those Easter Sunday morning services from all the other Sunday mornings we spent at church.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school or so that I experienced an Easter worship service worth remembering—that was when I first attended the Easter Vigil. Far from being a cheery experience that tries to out-sunshine all the secular associations of flowers and candy and bonnets, the Easter Vigil is an ancient, almost primal experience of worship that uses elements of fire and water, light and sound, to tap deeply into the roots of our faith. Death, resurrection, and our role in salvation history come to life through story and song, but also through gestures and ritual. As Gail R. O’Day writes in Feasting on the Word:
As a worship experience, the Easter Vigil draws on all of the congregation’s senses and invites them to enter fully into the paschal drama. The service begins in darkness, typically outside of the sanctuary. A fire is lighted, and the worshiping community experiences the sound of crackling wood, the smell of smoke and ash, the warmth of the fire cutting into the cold and dark. The celebrant announces, “On this most holy night, in which our Lord passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer.” The beginning of the Easter Vigil is a dramatic moment for a dramatic night.
I pray to see many of you at our Easter Vigil on Saturday, April 7, at 8 pm. We will begin outside, weather permitting, and light the Paschal fire together. It will be a truly memorable way to mark the transition out of darkness into light, to celebrate Christ’s victory over death, and to join together as a parish family as we turn our hearts and minds to the “festival of everlasting light.”
Blessings,
Pamela+
The Reverend Pamela Dolan To Be Welcomed By Bishop Wayne Smith
As New Rector At Episcopal Church Of The Good Shepherd
Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd is pleased to announce the Renewal of Ministry with the Welcoming of a New Rector to be held on Wednesday, April 18 at 7:00 PM at Church of the Good Shepherd, 1166 S. Mason Road, Town & Country, MO 63131. The Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith, Tenth Bishop of Missouri, will preside over the service and install The Rev. Pamela Dolan as the new Rector at Church of the Good Shepherd. The preacher will be the Rev. John Musgrave, Rector Emeritus of Good Shepherd.
Pamela was born in California and moved to Micronesia at age 7. Her family soon relocated to Hawaii, where she spent the rest of grade school and high school. She has the distinction of attending Punahou Academy, alma mater of President Barack Obama, Steve Case, and Carie Ann Inaba.
She was baptized and raised Roman Catholic. She knew early on (at her First Communion at age 7) that she had a calling to the church and that it would play a central role in her life. While an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, she spent her Junior Year Abroad at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. That was the first place she articulated a sense of vocation, and began to struggle with the male-only definition of priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church. After graduating from Cal (Phi Beta Kappa with Highest Honors in English), she moved to Seattle, where she worked in a bookstore and was set up on a date with John Dolan, whom she married in 1994. John Dolan is a first cousin of Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York.
Pamela attended Harvard Divinity School and graduated with an MTS in 1995. While at HDS she felt very torn over vocational issues and did not think she could ever leave “the Church” so she decided to turn her energy elsewhere and began a doctorate in medieval English at NYU. Pamela was on a full scholarship with stipend and enjoyed NYU, but moved away before completing her degree.
Pamela felt called to pursue ordination (as in “an actual voice of God” moment) while pregnant with her first child, Annabel. Annie was born in 1998 in Connecticut. Her second daughter, Kathleen, followed in 2004 and was born in California.
Pamela became an Episcopalian in 2000, after moving back to California. She began working in an Episcopal parish as Director of Family Ministries. The path to ordination was met with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In 2005, John’s career moved them to St. Louis, which allowed them to be closer to his family. She began working her way into the discernment process in the Diocese of Missouri, and it was as if every door opened before she could knock.
She became a postulant for Holy Orders in the fall of 2008 and began the Doctorate of Ministry program at Sewanee, the University of the South, in the summer of 2009. Pamela was ordained to the transitional diaconate on December 18, 2009 and to the priesthood on June 19, 2010. Pamela worked at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves from 2006-2011, first as Communications Assistant, then as Director of Christian Formation for Children and Families, then as Curate.
Pamela’s blog, “An Inquiring Stranger”, runs on the Civil Religion page of stltoday.com (http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/civil-religion/pamela-dolan/).
Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd was established as a mission of the Diocese of Missouri in 1953, sponsored by St. Peter’s Church in Ladue, Missouri. In 1956 the facilities were available on the present site in Town & Country, Missouri. The Rev. Pamela Dolan is the 6th Rector since the church was founded.
This event is open to the public.
COMPLIMENTARY VALET PARKING is available.
For directions please visit http://bit.ly/GEVwSx or call 314-576-5502.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
–Book of Common Prayer, Liturgy for Ash Wednesday
We begin Lent with ashes on our foreheads and the best of intentions in our hearts. We want this year to be different, to be the one where we finally figure out what it means for us to “observe a holy Lent.” Or maybe we try to do all the things we’ve done in the past that have worked so well, only to find that they fall short this time, that our spiritual lives feel dull and flat and not at all enlivened by the change of liturgical season.
So what to do? What’s the right way to approach Lent?
At some point in elementary school we all had our first experience of word problems. When our math skills are very rudimentary, the main point of a word problem seems to be to teach us how to decide whether the best way to solve the problem is through addition or through subtraction. Those are the two skills we know at that point, addition and subtraction, and only one of them will result in the right answer. If Timmy has two apples and he gives one away…that’s a subtraction problem. If Jane has three apples and Timmy gives her one more…that’s addition!
Lent seems to me a little like a word problem. Many people who grew up with a strict sense of penitence and self-denial during Lent have decided that that was the wrong approach, and they want to add something instead. So they look for “extra” things to do during Lent, like adding another weekly worship service or adding a spiritual discipline to their routine (Scripture study or the Daily Office, for instance). This is a wonderful approach that can be very helpful.
Others, however, might find that they have all the “extras” they can handle in life, and it’s time to do some subtracting. It might be that they want to cut out something they consume too much of, like sweets or chocolate or meat, or something they spend too much time on, like Facebook or listening to the radio or watching TV. This can be very helpful, too, especially when the time or money “saved” is then put to good use elsewhere. Then you can start doing a different kind of math problem: if I cut out one restaurant meal a week or my daily run to Starbucks, how much money could I save and where might I give that money? Does someone else need it more than I do? What about the time I save? Is there a way to give it back to God?
How do you know if Lent is best approached through addition or subtraction? Here’s a hint: the first item listed as part of an observance of a Holy Lent is self-examination.
If I can be of any assistance in helping you find a new practice to add (maybe the Daily Office, Bible Study, or a new resource for study and meditation) or for figuring out what to subtract, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I love having those conversations with you!
Faithfully,
Pamela+