Swedenborg Chapel
Newsletter of the Cambridge Society of the New Jerusalem
December, 2003
Advent is upon us. In churches across the world congregations will gather on Sunday and begin the ritual of lighting the candles of the advent wreath. Most advent wreaths will be constructed from evergreens, woven into a circle, and placed in a prominent part of the sanctuary. In her book, “To Dance with God,” Gertrud Mueller Nelson reminds us that the first advent wreaths were pine boughs woven around wagon wheels. Back in the old days, people would slow down when the days got this short and cold. They would take time off from traveling and working and move indoors, waiting expectantly for Christmas and the winter solstice to approach. Families would remove a wheel from their wagon, bring it inside, and use it as a frame for their advent wreath. This wheel was not only a beautiful decoration, but a powerful symbol of sacrifice. Ms. Nelson reminds us that the word sacrifice comes from the Latin words sacre and ficere, and literally means “to make holy.” Imagine what it would mean for us in this day and age to pull the tires off our cars, bicycles, trucks and airplanes, sacrificing all the important work we feel we need to get out and do, and instead sit quietly at home preparing our hearts for the celebration of Christ’s first coming. How much more would we feel the spiritual power and symbolism of Christmas?
Here in Massachusetts, we are not strangers to the real meaning and true power of sacrifice. On November 19, in a special meeting of the membership of the Massachusetts New Church Union held at the Elmwood New Church, it was agreed that our corporate body sell the property we own on Newbury street to provide the Cambridge Society with enough money to purchase the chapel (see the November newsletter for an outline of the proposed ownership and payment agreement). The other congregations in our association have chosen to make a great sacrifice and offer this tremendous and overwhelmingly generous gift to our congregation. I write on behalf of our society to express the deep sense of gratitude we feel toward our brothers and sisters for their willingness to extend such a tremendous gift in order to preserve our place of worship. We want everyone to know how thankful and how committed we are as a society to use this gift for the good of all. As you gather with friends and family throughout this season, may you find a way to make the sacrifices needed and accept the sacrifices offered, that you might truly feel the wonder of this season, and the tremendous love our Lord can express for us through our willingness to give of ourselves to one another. A very Merry Christmas to one and all.
Advent
Rev. Sarah Buteux
“The other congregations in our association have chosen to make a great sacrifice and offer this tremendous and overwhelmingly generous gift to our congregation”
Advent and Christmas celebrations in music
Emily Romney
The Christmas Eve Candlelight Service at Swedenborg Chapel will take place on Wednesday, December 24, in the late afternoon. The service will begin with a musical prelude of Christmas music at 4:45 PM., followed by a service of carols and Christmas scripture. Leading the music will be vocal quartet Elizabeth Johnson, soprano; Emily Romney, mezzo soprano; Jason McStoots, tenor; and Keith E. Brinkley, baritone; and Reiko Akasaka, organ and piano.
Special music to celebrate the Advent and Christmas season will be woven into every service through Advent. Music with bells and drums and finger cymbals will make appearances through the season, as well as guest soloists including Priscilla Little, soprano, and Michael Baum, baritone. The once-a-month Chapel Choir will sing for the service on December 21st, a special celebration to mark the last Sunday in Advent before Christmas.
Join us for the regular Sunday services during Advent, and on Christmas Eve for what has become a favorite holiday neighborhood tradition at Swedenborg Chapel.
Swedenborg Chapel Newsletter
MNCU bookroom moves to Swedenborg Chapel
Andrew Dole
One of the reasons for the existence of the Massachusetts New-Church Union as stipulated by its charter, is to maintain a bookroom where the public can read about Swedenborg. The closure of the Swedenborg Bookroom and Lending Library at 79 Newbury St. in Boston prompted Eugene Taylor to suggest Swedenborg Chapel as an alternative location for the Union’s collection, and the Union’s Executive Committee subsequently voted to move its library to Cambridge.
The process of moving the Union’s library to the Chapel involves a number of steps, and the process has been underway since August. The first steps involved making space for the collection in the Chapel’s parish wing. A number of years ago, the Union’s lending library had been moved to the Chapel, together with several sets of metal utility
shelves. At the start of the project volunteers from the congregation went through
this collection and removed duplicates and extraneous material, packing these books for storage with the remainder of the Union’s collection. At approximately the same time, the reference library collection at Newbury Street was divided into two sections, one section to be incorporated into the collection at the Chapel, and the remainder to be placed into storage. In October, wooden bookshelves from the Newbury Street Bookstore were moved to Cambridge to replace the original utility shelving, and the existing collection was re-shelved. Since that time, books designated for incorporation into the new collection have been moved from Boston to Cambridge. The bulk of the heavy lifting has been done by Cliff Siegh, who has devoted many hours to the project.
In addition to moving the books, the Union has been supporting the updating of its library records. A database of the Union reference library had been compiled by the staff of the Newbury St. Bookstore; it has been reformatted and updated, and Andrew Dole and Rebekah Simons are in the process of adding the books currently in Cambridge and incorporating the books from Newbury St. into the collection. We hope to have the entire Cambridge collection catalogued by early 2004.
The next stage of the process, once the Cambridge catalog is complete, will be
Rebekah Simons cataloging books at Swedenborg Chapel.
to publish the catalog database on the Web. Once the information is available
online, those in search of hard-to-find books on Swedenborg will be able to find
out quickly and easily if a particular book can be found at the Chapel.
The remaining books from the Newbury St. collection which do not end up in Cambridge will be boxed and shipped to an archival storage facility. We plan to continue cataloguing these books once the bulk of the work in Cambridge is complete. Eventually, we hope to have detailed information on every book in the Union collection, both those accessible at the Chapel and those in storage.
If you are interested in literature on Swedenborg, including collections of lectures and sermons, biographies of famous Swedenborgians, correspondential biblical commentaries, or expositions of Swedenborgian doctrine (we have quite a few of those!), I encourage you to stop by the Chapel. If you would like to find out if we have a particular book, feel free to contact us.
Do you like Come join the pick-up choir every third Sunday of the month at Swedenborg Chapel. Rehearsals begin at 10:00 AM for the 11:00 service. The next performance is December
to sing?
21. Please join us.
Mystical experiences The Mystical Experiences Discussion Group, led by Carl Schroeder, meets on the first discussion group and third Wednesdays of every month from 7:30 to 9:30 PM. It is an opportunity to share personal growth stories and raise awareness in a supportive environment. Please be punctual, and bring an open mind and heart.
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December, 2003
The First Commandment
True Christian Religion
291-295 translated by John Chadwick
There is not to be any other God before my face. You are not to make for yourself a carving or any likeness of anything in the heavens above and on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth. You are not to bow down before them or worship them, because I, Jehovah your God, am a jealous God.
Exodus 20: 4,5.
In the natural or literal sense this commandment also means that no one is to be loved above all except God, nor anything except what comes from God. Anyone or anything which is loved above all is, to the lover, God and divine. For instance, if anyone loves himself or the world above all else, then he or the world is his own God.
The spiritual sense of this commandment is that no other God is to be worshiped except the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is Jehovah, who came into the world and carried the redemption, without which no man, nor any angel could have been saved.
The celestial sense of this commandment is that the Lord Jehovah is infinite, measureless and eternal: He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. He is the first and the last, the beginning and the end, who was and who is and who shall be. He is love itself and wisdom itself, or good itself and truth itself, and consequently life itself. Thus He is the sole source of everything.
Teen retreat We hosted the SCYL (Swedenborgian Church Youth League) retreat at the Cambridge a success Church this past month and we would do it again in a second. The teens were great! This retreat afforded me the opportunity to closely observe the inner workings of Convention’s
Sarah Buteux
youth program, and I could not have been more impressed with Kurt Fekete, the director, and with the young people of our church. The best way to describe the overall attitude of the retreat would be to compare it to a family reunion, but unlike most families, this one is actually functional. What struck me right away was the immense amount of affection, trust, and respect these kids have for Kurt, and for each other. Kurt encouraged the teens to gather their own energies and talents and lead us in a worship service that was beautiful and meaningful. But the real beauty and meaning was in the making of the service, the hours of preparation that the kids put in, and the immense effort expended in encouraging one another. Every single kid had a job to do and they knew that while they were reading, singing, or simply putting out the
candles, that all the other kids were right behind them in spirit. An atmosphere like this does not just happen among people, be they young or old. I believe Kurt and the kids deserve a lot of credit for cultivating such a positive and affirming culture in the SCYL.
I have experienced a number of encouraging signs of our church’s growth and impact, but nothing could have prepared me for the spiritual high I felt late Sunday afternoon after the last teen had been picked up. Knowing that these kids are out there eagerly awaiting their Winter get together in Almont, and knowing that the oldest ones have Transitions to look forward to, I am fully confident that we are witnessing a strong and powerful new generation in the making that will grow up with a love for, and commitment to, the Swedenborgian church. I could not be more thankful to General Council and all the people who believed in the importance of funding the position of Youth Director. These retreats are incredibly important, and the Cambridge church was truly blessed by the opportunity to host such a wonderful group of people.
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Swedenborg Chapel Newsletter
Amir Zargari receives asylum
Cliff Siegh
Our prayers were answered for our resident Persian Buddhist Amir Zargari, who was granted asylum recently in Federal court. Amir is an avid reader of Swedenborg who participates every Thursday evening in our Swedenborg reading and discussion group, lending his singular perspective to all our conversations. He is genuinely interested in translating Heaven and Hell, Divine Love and Wisdom, and Congugial Love into Farsi (Persian).
Amir was facing deportation to Iran, where he was born and raised Muslim. He came to the U.S. at the age of 17 on a 2-year student visa in 1979 on one of the last planes to depart Tehran just after the Shah fell from power and just before the hostages were seized from the U.S. embassy and held for 444 days at the end of the Carter administration. Relations between the two countries were severed, and Amir had no chance of renewing his visa. His openly pro-western sympathies and opposition to the fundamentalist regime left him fearing for his life should he return, so he went “low profile” and stayed here, acquiring a degree from Harvard(psychology) among other accomplishments. When the Attorney-general Ashcroft called for all males from middle-eastern countries to come forward and be counted, Amir had been reading Heaven and Hell and was inspired to come forward despite the post-9/11 climate of “housecleaning” underway in the Justice Department.
As a Buddhist (or any other religious persuasion other than Muslim) in Iran, Amir would be, by definition, an “apostate”, having been raised Muslim followed by conversion to another faith. The laws of Iran mandate execution for all apostates! The judge saw the light and granted him asylum, allowing a memorable Thanksgiving for Amir—whew!
Rev. Sarah was there for the whole hearing, lending her support,and can tell you about it in more detail.
Amir, as you can probably imagine, is on cloud 9.
Hour of peace at Swedenborg Chapel invites you to an Hour of Peace, featuring the piano music of Steve Swedenborg Chapel McAlpine. This is a time for meditation, quiet prayer, and reflection on the first Wednesday of every month from 5:30 to 6:30.
Weekly Swedenborg reading group
The weekly Swedenborg reading group meets Thursday evenings from 7:00 to 8:30 PM. We are reading and discussing Robert Kirven’s “Concise Overview of Swedenborg’s Theology.”
This past Thursday, Cliff Siegh treated the group to some animated readings from the first English translation of The Intercourse Between the Soul and the Body (Thomas Hartley, 1770, Theosophic Lucubration on the Nature of Influx), and Cuno’s Memoirs on Swedenborg.
We meet for a community meal at 5:30. Please join us.
Chairs still available OK Red Sox fans, it’s time to cowboy up and purchase a folding chair for the fellowship room if you have not already done so. Thank you to all who have contributed to the purchase of 46 chairs, but we still have six chairs looking for a donor. Don’t miss out on your chance to contribute to a more welcoming fellowship room by sending $15 for each chair to the chapel.
New crosses in time for holiday giving
In response to popular demand, the Cambridge Society has commissioned the casting of several more silver Convention crosses. These striking hand-finished pieces are a unique and beautiful expression of our Swedenborgian faith. They are a meaningful gift for the holidays you can share with family and friends.
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December, 2003
Being there
Lars Wiberg
Some while back when I was actually employed it was my lot to attend a seminar put on by a consultant in management. The class of roughly 20 had a heavy population of engineers. One of the exercises we were to perform was to select the five or six most important characteristics that a manager should have. Someone might have explained to our instructor that to get a room full of engineers to agree on anything like this was no cake-walk. Although I didn't realize it at the outset, I wasn't going to make his life any easier either .
He had a long list of presumed managerial traits that we were supposed to winnow through—everything, it seemed, from the presence of genius to the absence of dandruff. We were each to select a dozen, and he had some way of manipulating our choices over two or three trial runs to come out with a result that would suggest what emphasis in performance the prevailing culture in the firm was actually looking for among its managers. After many arguments, we got to the final tally, and I suggested to our teacher that the most important thing a manager could be hadn't been listed at all. He looked perplexed until I said “A manager has to be there. If he isn't available the other stuff doesn't matter” The consultant, to his credit, simply said “I'll remember that.”
What set me thinking thus anecdotally is the question we can well be asking ourselves now that we are passing into brighter days as a Society. We are in a situation that represents transition from a mode that emphasized surviving to one that offers the promise of flourishing. Our emphasis can safely change now from security to expression. However, what is the principal ingredient that will foster our development? As individuals, what is the main thing we can be in the development of our Society's future? You guessed it. We can be “there”.
You have seen my initiatives for the future, assembled with an eye toward cooperation among the various churches that advance our faith. There will be others too from other than me. We are a talented and creative Society. There will be an abundance of things to do. But to be as successful as possible in the doing, we will have to be “there.” There is no more important qualification for us to bring to our Society at this time than our availability, our presence, our communication, our hands-on enthusiasms. No matter what we decide to undertake as we advance as a Society, we need the knowledge that we can depend on each other to get it done. We need to be “there.”
Social Action Committee update
Elizabeth Wisdom
The Social Action Committee thanks all who continue to give clothing, food and other items to those in need. We ask, however, that you give only seasonal clothing, as we have no storage space for summer clothing, and the shelters can only accept winter clothing now. The women’s shelter, On the Rise, has requested more gloves and hats, used is ok. The men’s shelter, Casper, has asked for more clothing. Food is an ongoing need for everyone.
Sunday schedule
December 7: Second Sunday of Advent, Rev. Sarah Buteux preaches December 14: Third Sunday of Advent, Leah Goodwin preaches December 21: Fourth Sunday of Advent, service of lessons and carols December 24: (4:45 PM) Candlelight Christmas Eve service December 28 Lars Wiberg speaks
January 4: Rev. Sarah Buteux preaches January 11: Rev. Sarah Buteux preaches January 18: Martin Luther King’s birthday, guest speaker January 25: Rev. Sarah Buteux preaches
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Swedenborg Chapel Newsletter
Welcome to Swedenborg Chapel
The Cambridge Society of the New Jerusalem invites all who are interested to join us for weekly worship and fellowship. Every Sunday morning we host a Bible study at 10 AM in the parlor. The worship service begins at 11:00, and children have the opportunity to attend Sunday school during the sermon. Communion is held every first Sunday of the month, and is open to all. Rev. Sarah Buteux and Leah Goodwin, our ministerial intern, lead the service.
We invite you as well to our other events and activities. We make the chapel available for weddings of all who wish to be married in the presence of the Lord. Stop by and see us. Ask questions. Tell us how we can be of use to you. We invite you to share in our community in a way that suits your needs.
Swedenborg Chapel, The Newsletter of the Cambridge Society of the New Jerusalem, is published on a regular basis. Opinions expressed are those of the writers unless otherwise indicated. Please submit articles or notices to the Newsletter at Swedenborg Chapel, 50 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, or telephone 617.864.0984. Send e-mail to revsarahb@mac.com, jblageson@hotmail.edu, or hziegler@springmail.com.
For more information visit www.swedenborgchapel.org.
| Editor: | Herb Ziegler |
| Cambridge Society President: | Lars-Erik Wiberg |
| Pastor: | Rev. Sarah Buteux |
| Director of Social Action Ministries: | Jackie Lageson |
| Ministerial Intern: | Leah Goodwin |
| Pastor Emeritus: | Rev. F. Robert Tafel |
| Associate Pastor Emeritus: | Rev. Gladys Wheaton |
| Webmaster and Web Designer: | Carl Schroeder |
Cambr idge Society of of the New J e r usalem
Swedenborg Chapel 50 Quincy Street Cambridge, MA 02138
•December 24, 4:45 PM: Candlelight Christmas Eve service
Schedule of Events
- 1st & 3rd Tuesdays, 7:00–9:00 PM: Men In Transition
(MIT) training
- 1st & 3rd Wednesdays, 7:30–9:30 PM: Mystical Experiences Discussion Group
- Thursdays, 7:00–8:30 PM: Swedenborg Reading Group (dinner at 5:30)
- January 7, 5:30–6:30 PM: Hour of Peace