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Outdoor Chapel On Green Celebrates 2nd Year
by Allan Appel | Nov 8, 2010 12:03 pm
(5) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author
Posted to: Religion, Downtown
A chill swept the afternoon air. Michael Lane didn’t notice. He kept drumming away. “I don’t feel any cold,” he said, “with all this love out here.”
There are more than three churches on New Haven’s storied Green. Lane (at left in photo) and other homeless people or those still struggling with other demons worship every Sunday at 2:00 p.m. on the fourth one. It takes place on the grass and beneath the elms.
That congregation—The Chapel on the Green, an outdoor service combined with lunch and the provision of socks, toiletries and pastoral support—marked its second anniversary Sunday.
Lane and some 75 worshippers and volunteers celebrated with a particularly spirited drumming circle that inaugurates the service.
“A lot of people are uncomfortable coming indoors [to church] with [bags of their] belongings. Even people who are housed feel more comfortable and more in tune with God outside,” said the Rev. Alex Dyer.
So in 2008 he helped to found the outdoor ministry, a program of Trinity Episcopal Church, along with Kyle Pederson and Carol Archer, a deacon and reverend with the Episcopal Church respectively.
Dyer threw down the spiritual gauntlet as the formal part of the service began: “All perfect people raise your hands,”
Paraphrasing from Luke 6:20 to 31 the Rev. Carol Archer said, “You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all” because you are closer to the eternal shelter and the heavenly meal.
Dyer called for a moment of silence to be followed by worshippers offering up prayers aloud which they thought important. One person called, “For all the public officials who won: Let ‘em be for the citizens and not themselves.”
Another called out for the people of Haiti. Yet another: “For all those looking for jobs and shelter.”
Yet a third anonymous voice called out a prayer for “the beautiful trees and beautiful people who adorn this green.”
“Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer,” rang out across the Green.
“People who need church are not going in, so we need to bring it to them,” said Dyer.
At Sunday’s event, in addition to the usual bagged lunch, socks, and orisons, flu shots were available. The city’s health department and Columbus House are partners in the project.
To celebrate the anniversary, a “spiritual labyrinth” made of festive flags was also on hand. After the 30-minute service and lots of, homeless guys like David Firestone and Ronnie McDaniel (right to left) walked the labyrinth planting a flag with their prayer written on it at the center.
In McDaniel’s case, his red flag bore a prayer for shelter and safety.
According to Evans, the local spiritual labyrinth originated in the Middle Ages as a kind of local pilgrimage to inspire meditation and release of tension for those unable to go to Jerusalem.
Dorothy Egan, who organized Sunday’s spiritual maze, told McDaniel, “Just follow the path. You can’t get lost.”
What was there in greatest abundance, however, were innumerable gestures of contact and hope that said to people in dire straits: you are not alone.
The way, for example, Chris Evans (on the right in photo), the program’s coordinator, who works out of Columbus House, gently took the arm of this man.
Unlike Michael Lane, a regular at the drumming circle and service for the past eight months, this man was new. He seemed in a state of shock.
“’I just lost my father’ he told me,” Evans reported.
Evans took his arm, showed him the line for lunch, and eventually directed him to Pederson and the Rev. Julie Kelsey (of St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Whitney Avenue), who prayed with the man for his father.
“We can offer the service, the food. In some cases people ask for detoxing. Sometimes we are asked to walk with someone to the hospital. But it’s mostly what you see [the pastoral camaraderie],” Pederson said.
Not surprisingly, it appeared the volunteers got as much out of the experience of service as the recipients.
J.T. Lincoln (with the long hair in the photo at the top of the story, drumming beside Michael Lane), for example, is a North Haven high school student who hardly misses a Sunday. He said he liked the praise and the worship part of the drumming best.
“I come to hear the music in all of us. Like [the drumming] in the human heart,” he said.
Pederson said those working with the homeless expected an increase in need this winter especially among low-income working families, largely due to the severe economic turndown.
Chapel on the Green, which is affiliated with a network of similar outdoor prayer projects called Ecclesia Ministries, is largely supported by local donations of food, clothing, and of course money. Click here to do that and to learn more of the program.
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Comments
posted by: Ryan on November 8, 2010 9:15pm
The Rev. Alex Dyer is the Priest-in-Charge of The Episcopal Church of St. Paul & St. James on Olive and Chapel Streets. http://www.StPaulStJames.org
posted by: Thom Peters on November 8, 2010 10:05pm
Today the weather turned nasty - my thoughts and prayers are with these folks and the folks who help them.
posted by: Walt on November 9, 2010 7:37am
Sounds good to me but please do not let the ACLU learn about it.
posted by: William on November 9, 2010 6:30pm
Would the gentleman with Chris Evans have shared his name for inclusion in the story? Was he asked? I think that it’s important to get all of the names of the congregants, as you got the names of all of the ministers. Many of the people who come to Chapel on the Green have a hard time getting recognition as valuable individuals in this society. Making sure their names are recognized is a small, but profoundly important step toward that recognition.
posted by: Kari on November 10, 2010 3:43pm
Thank you for this very well done piece. With the text and pictures working together, I could really get the idea of what it was like. I love how this congregation is breaking down walls. I pray we can all be asking how God is leading us out into the world.
