Tag Archives: parishioners

A New Commandment?

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Easter 5C. 15 May 2022.  The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

Acts 11:1-18. The spirit told me…not to make a distinction between them and us.
Revelation 21:1-6. I am making all things new.…To the thirsty I will give water as a gift.
John 13:31-35. I give you a new commandment, [in order] that you love one another.

O God of all, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

We are deep into Eastertide, and our scripture lessons and our cantata lesson today describe the visions of Peter, John of Patmos, and John the Evangelist, and Bach’s vision of peace and joy, comfort, calm, and quiet at the last. We’re also giving thanks to God for the five decades of the gentle and inviting presence of Stephen Babcock as chief usher and greeter. For more than thirty of his fifty+ years at Emmanuel, Sunday after Sunday, no matter what the weather, Steve stood just outside of the massive doors of a daunting stone structure in the first block of an intimidating location to offer graceful welcome. The vestry has named the doors to our west lobby “The Babcock Doors”, and just before we exchange the Peace today, we will dedicate and bless them. Continue reading →

2022

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  • Rector blessing doors with Holy Water20 May.  The Rev. Pamela Werntz blessed the Babcock Doors to the Sargent Lobby at the rear of our sanctuary, where head usher Stephen Babcock welcomed congregants to our services for fseveral decades.  Assisting her are subdeacon Karen King and the Rev. Robert Greiner, with Stephen facing his doors. Although our rector had lifted our mask mandate for the Covid pandemic earlier, vulnerable congregants and many of our musicians continued to wear them.  See also: Timeline 1997.
  • May.  Vaughan Sherrill joined us as Parish Administrator.  She is a great-granddaughter of Henry Knox Sherrill, who was ninth bishop of our diocese, twentieth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, a founder of the Episcopal Church Foundation, and President of the World Council of Churches.
  • Sept.  Our rector became dean of our diocese’s Boston Harbor Deanery.
  • 11 Dec.   The Chorus of Emmanuel Music sang parishioner Sid Richardson’s Magnificat, which they had commissioned for Gaudete Sunday. Listen to it on our YouTube Channel.
  • Our puppeteer Sara Peattie published on Amazon’s Kindle platform 68 Ways to Make Really Big Puppets.

2017

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  • Feb. 5.  At our annual meeting we voted to update our Parish By-Laws.
  • Oct 15.  Rabbi Howard Berman preached about the 13th anniversary of our relationship with Central Reform Temple (formerly Boston Jewish Spirit).
  • Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray by Rosiland Rosenberg is published by Oxford U. Press.  Amazon’s record describes her contribution:  “Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country.”  

    Book jacket, Oxford U. Press

Its last chapter deals with Pauli’s call to ordained ministry. On p. 356, Rosenblatt notes that in 1967 Pauli began to attend Emmanuel, where then rector Alvin Kershaw advised her and referred her to The Rt. Rev. John W. Burgess, who was our diocesan bishop and the first African American episcopal bishop.  

See also Timeline entries for Pauli Murray: 1944, 1951, 1970, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.

See also Timeline entry 2007 about the restoration of our former organ:  Casavant Frères Opus 700.

 

1994

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John Harbison; photo credit: Julian Bullitt

John Harbison dedicated to our benefactor Priscilla Rawson Young his memorable setting of 1 Corinthians 11:23-5 as “Communion Words“, which we sing with his other service music in Lent.

 

 

James Primosch composed “Meditation for Candlemas”, first of several motets based on the poetry of Denise Levertov, who attended Emmanuel in the 1980s.  It was sung in our service on Feb. 1, 2015.  Here is the text of “Candlemas” from her collection Breathing the Water (NY: New Directions, 1987). Continue reading →

1989

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  • April 8.  Emmanuel Music gave a concert in honor of Principal Guest Conductor John Harbison’s 50th birthday (20 Dec. 1988).  His wife Rose Mary Pederson Harbison opened with a violin concerto she had played at its 1980 premiere.
  • Katharine Ward Lane Weems died and bequeathed a pair of Spanish candelabra now standing in the  baptistery of our Sanctuary.  Born 22 Feb.1899, she was the only child of  Emma Gildersleeve and Gardiner Martin Lane, who was chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts from 1907 until his death in 1914. They lived at 53 Marlborough Street and were members of Emmanuel.

Katharine attended the Museum School from 1915 and began to show her work in 1920.  She designed the brick friezes and bronze doors of Harvard’s Biological Laboratories with two massive bronze rhinoceri (one pictured below) installed in the courtyard in 1937.

See also

Image by Daderot, WikiCommons, of her sculpture at the Museum School, Boston

1960

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Centennial was celebrated.  Emmanuel Church, 1860-1960: The First Hundred Years, compiled by Harriet Allen Robeson, was published by the Vestry. See its introduction and appendix. For its chapters about the tenures of particular rectors, please see these years:

  1. 1861  F.D. Huntington
  2. 1869  A.H. Vinton
  3. 1878  L. Parks
  4. 1904  E. Worcester
  5. 1929  B.M. Washburn
  6. 1932  P.E. Osgood
  7. 1943  R.G. Metters
  8. 1957  H.B. Sedgwick

1944

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Pauli Murray Roots & Soul Mural, Durham NC
credit: Brett Cook & Pauli Murray Project

Pauli Murray, first African American woman to attend Howard U. School of Law and later a vestry member of Emmanuel, received her J.D..  For its sesquicentennial Howard is hosting a TEDx conference on 9/15/1917: Singing of a New American”: Pauli Murray’s Legacy and Justice in the 21st Century.

See also:

1925

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May 12.  The poet Amy Lawrence Lowell died young of a cerebral hemorrhage. She had been born in 1874 to our parishioners Katherine Bigelow Lawrence (1832-95) and Augustus Lowell (1830-1900). Many members of the Lawrence and Lowell families attended Emmanuel.  Her partner Ada Dwyer Russell was the subject of many of her romantic poems.  A volume of her complete works was published in 1955.  She is buried in the Lowell plot (#3401) on Bellwort Path in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

 

1918

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Albert Williams Snow replaced Lynnwood Farnum as organist.

January 20. The Anthony Memorial Organ in the West Gallery was dedicated, honoring Silas Reed Anthony (1863-1914), who served as Parish Clerk (1887-1898), Vestryman (1898-1906), and Junior Warden (1906-1914). The organ was a gift of his widow, Harriet Weeks. who later became Mrs. Randolph Frothingham.

March 22.  Bishop William Lawrence and Rector Elwood Worcester officiated at the funeral of Andrew Robeson Sargent, who at the age of 42 died in his sleep. After graduating from Harvard College in 1900, he had followed in his father Charles Sprague Sargent‘s footsteps and worked as a landscape architect with his brother-in-law Guy Lowell.  His wife Maria de Acosta Sargent, daughter of the writer Mercedes de Acosta, had been painted by his third cousin John Singer Sargent. His mother Mary Robeson Sargent and sisters Henrietta, Molly, and Alice Sargent gave in his memory our hymn boards and the carved doors to leading from our sanctuary to the “Bride’s Lobby”.

See also:

  • His letters to his father Charles Sprague Sargent in the archives of the Arnold Arboretum.
  •  “Andrew Robeson Sargent, Class of 1900.”  The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, 1918.
  • “Andrew Robeson Sargent Dies.” The New York Times, March 21, 1918.
  • “Many Friends Mourn Andrew R. Sargent.” The Boston Daily Globe, March 23, 1918.

August 26.  Col. Cranmore Nesmith Wallace, who had served on our vestry from 1896 until his death, died at the age of 74.  His widow Eunice Sprague Wallace gave 2 lancets in our sanctuary (#18: Adoration of the Magi) in his memory

November 2.  The Churchman (p. 518) reported that the Emmanuel Memorial House was serving as an emergency shelter for children made homeless by the influenza epidemic.  Nurses and workers from the Children’s Aid Society and the (Episcopal) Church Home Society were supervising children housed in its “clubrooms” until they could be placed with families by “the usual placing-out services”.