September Celebration 2010



Mark Your Calendar and Come Out to the
St. Peter’s September Celebration!

Greetings and a warm welcome to all from St. Peter’s Church! Our parish life offers worship, music, spiritual formation and outreach to all who seek a vibrant and active spiritual home! We look forward to seeing you at our September Celebration on September 12th. Our plans for the day include:

Church School registration (pre K – 8th grades) beginning at 9:45 am;
Services of Holy Communion at 8:00 am and 10:00 am; 
Adult Bible Study between services, starting at 9:00 am;
Confirmation Class registration (8th grade and up) with Pastor Voysey following the 10:00 am service;
Youth Choir signups and conversations with Kristen Dirmeier following the 10:00 am service;
St. Peter’s ROCKS (9th – 12th grades) gathering at 11:30 am in the Bidwell Room; and
Fun, food, games and fellowship for all, on the lawn following the 10:00 am service!

For more info call: 781-891-3200 or email office@stpetersweston.org

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St. Peter's Sermon Recordings - Listen Now Online!

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St. Peter's Confirmation Service



Eleven youth members of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Weston were confirmed on May 15. The Rt. Rev. Bud Cederholm, Suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, confirmed the group at Trinity Episcopal Church in  Concord. Pictured with Bishop Cederholm, front, from left, Matt Jacobs, Margot Wynant, Emily Phaneuf, Julia Icke and Lindsey Ruggles; back,  John McDaniel, Chris Symonds, Samantha Marchiony, and Anna Lachenauer. (Not shown are Greg Fligor and Brinley Macnamara).

St. Peter's Birthday Party Highlights

St. Peter’s Celebration
From the Town Crier

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church welcomed over 80 people to a gala celebration and auction on April 10. Attended by longtime and newer church members, the event was to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the church building. The Rt. Rev. Thomas Shaw, Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, attended and was the winning bidder of some prized Red Sox seats. Other auction items included a helicopter trip to Martha’s Vineyard, weekend getaways, vintage wines, and may other special items. Church members Tom Keery and Janice Corley entertainingly acted as auctioneers, helping to raise over $40,000 for the church. “It’s great to see that the spirit is still so alive and well at St. Peter’s. This is a community that can really come together to have fun and do a good thing as the same time,” said event co-chair Suzie Reeves. Longtime church members Dave and Bobbie Bradley were also in attendance. Dave, who was a warden of the church when the building was erected, recounted stories of how the new building came to be and offered some highlights of the church’s history over the past 50 years.

Phillip Krug

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A Sermon by The Reverend Philip Krug Preached on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Consecration of St. peter's Church at 320 Boston Post Road, Weston Rejoice with All your Heart, December 13, 2009, ST.PETER'S, WESTON, MA What a day for a celebration! When this church was consecrated fifty years ago, I was in my 20's. We have been on a long journey since then, and for 18 years, St. Peter's and I shared that journey. You cannot imagine what a delight it is to stand again in this beloved church and speak to you. Some of you are old-timers, and I expect to be indulged in a few reminiscences. Also, however, I want to comment on some events of those exciting - but difficult - years. St. Peter's had originally been an Anglo-catholic parish, but was sold as the site for Christian Scientists after my first year. Miss Bews, our beloved secretary, on snow­covered nights, would skitter across the street to sleep, instead of going to what she called her "happy hut" in Billerica. After some differences of opinion, the lovely colonial church was built, with our chapel containing the best of the old church. Today's issues may not be happy huts, yet our church still faces times that demand hard decisions. In my years here, it was a time of turmoil in our country. There was a major war going on. I suppose I might have had 20 books in our library that were on Vietnam. Many Sundays I would preach about opposing the war. I could see faces that were not happy to hear that. And then when the Sunday came around for Don Dunbar, our associate, to preach, he would support the war. There was racial strife, as there is now. We had just gotten started with an experi­ment we called the Roxbury-WestonNursery School. It was first housed at St. Peter's. This is not to say that everyone was in agreement with us doing that. One year we invited James, a black boy from the city, about nine years old, to spend a couple of weeks with our family. Lee took him and our own son of the same age to swim at the Country Club, where we had an honorary membership. An attendant stopped them, and said he would have to talk with the manager. Lee was the maddest mother in America. All three of them jumped into the water. Some members climbed out: "polluted water", you know. It didn't make any difference where Roxbury-Weston was housed, or that the youth of Weston danced in our parish hall Friday nights. Well, if the Club would not change its rules, we were free to change ours, and so we resigned our membership. That freedom to act as we saw fit carried over to a warden joining with the local Baptist minister, Don Morris, and going to Selma. I marched with King in Boston. We lived through the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. The ease with which the couple last month walked into some event for the Obamas past the Secret Service brought shivers in me. We are a country with not mere incivility but with bold resistance admired. What hot button in me is be­ing pushed I don't know, but standing for the hard right is necessary. I remember that when the KentState shootings occurred, the youth of Weston began appearing on the front lawn of St. Peter's. They wanted to hear what the Church said about the meaning of such violence. Where would they turn to today?  Economically, we seemed to have nothing to fear. But the new social concerns were never quite accepted. By 1969, the church had stopped growing. Many people were distressed by the "new" ethics - or what they interpreted as lack of the old. Slowly, some members found a more comfortable church home. Virgil Fox was invited to dedicate the Gambrill organ. Unprepared for his style, we hurriedly hung a cord as requested across the chancel until he had flung off his red-lined black cape, and then he fired away. Here was tradition with a new twist. More churches moved into town, so the ecumenical boundaries blessedly widened. We supported the Wayland mission, and sent them 50 families, half of the 100 Wayland families we had had. In 1969, we had 3 services, with 45 confirmed. Attention was focused on liturgical innovation. Some of you will remember the green books and the zebra books in paperback on our way to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. They were handed to us from "headquarters", rather than coming from the pew. Some saw the hand of Vatican Two in these books. One warden was so angered at being asked to give The Peace to a stranger that he folded his arms over his chest to prove it. Where was God's Peace? Where was God? The Book eventually gave women the priesthood and the episcopate, but the full battle of gender qualification was yet to come. But other good things were happening, if one had the eyes to see within the "old" tradition. Two men and two women were priested. Another man told us why he had become a member of Ba'hai, the universalist religion. You know how I like to eat! When Lee and I first dated, she baked me a cake that went south at 45 degrees. But our four kids are real cooks like their mom, cooking by her recipes. She now has written four booklets and chapters she shared with Tutu and Archbishop Williams. Her latest is meditations for many days in the year, entitled, "Praying Day by Day" and published in paperback by Forward Movement. She is my true love, and I am so proud of her. Remember her brown hair? She was the first in Montvale to have bushy Afro hair, but is now a Marilyn Monroe blond. At the rectory, we entertained the Vestry, the Couple's Club, the Calendar Club, and other parish groups. We often met for dinner, and then for some dancing in the Town Hall, with its glittering ball of lights, Lee and I were once first arrivals at the BradUnderhill's. While our hosts welcomed guests at the front door, their Great Dane swallowed shrimp with stuck-in toothpicks in a few gulps. We gulped spellbound. We all made it through OK, even the Great Dane. And many years, when Ed and Barbie Burtt took us to dinner and dancing at the Lord Fox restaurant, daughter Becky came to babysit our kids. If you are wondering about the direction your life should go, I had misgivings too. My strong suit was in pastoral care. That included counseling. In one year, I recall counseling a young woman in the Anglo-catholic chapel to have an abortion, and at another time in the Bidwell Room counseling a woman not to have one. Their cir­cumstances were different. I hope that God was there as we prayed in both places. Our four children still rave about our two 10,000 mile camping trips across the country. We had saved up our two vacations over the years for 1965 and 1969. Would you believe the first was taken in a VW camper-bus, with no seat belts? Everything had sharp edges for all six of us to negotiate! In 1969, we bought a used Plymouth station wagon that was still under warranty even in its fifth year, and we pulled a new Cox trailer across country. At other years, we vacationed at a lake in New Hampshire with the Shepherds and the Morrises. Later we went to Maine. And in our 17th year here, Joe Studley and Fred Woodside got a group together and gave us a new, blue Ford station wagon. What a beauty! All of our children were patients of Dr. Earle, with his bow ties. Of our four, a dean now lives in Newton Centre, and was at the steeple raising on his fifth birthday. Our only daughter, a participant in the Weston Drama Workshop, is an actress in San Francisco. Our second son built a secret hideaway in the steeple, and now uses his creativity as a social worker in Indiana, PA. Our third son, when in elementary school here, missed the bus for a school trip because he was so deeply involved in reading a book. He is a documentary filmmaker in Bethesda, MD. It's only fair to ask why some of you came today? What has drawn you to this church? Years ago, Weston was out of the loop. It was a quiet town, where almost everyone knew each other, no matter what our work or street or ancestry. It would have been considered crazy to set aside a few acres of land for moderate housing, wouldn't it, Polly? There were no McMansions; just a town newly getting noticed. In some way, perhaps unknown to his family, Jesus came to the Baptizer, simply one of hundreds who had come to a place in their lives when something more meaning­ful was called for. "Am I in a wilderness of my own making?" he might have asked. "Who am I, God? What is my future? Has the Baptizer anything to teach me? Where am I to find happiness?" I deplore all the articles and books now written touting happiness. Alice Munro's latest is "Too Much Happiness." I agree; it's a fad. I'm with Carl Jung: shadows make life interesting! You may have noticed that I'm a bit reticent about bringing up today's gospel? Well, wouldn't you be too, on the Sundays in Advent, hearing about the Baptizer, with his so-called good news: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Shall I hold up the front page of today's Globe? It says the same thing in modern journalese! Have any of you anniversary people ever experienced fear, anger, illness, death, divorce, alienation, obligations you could never meet? I took communion Tuesday to a man, whose condition suddenly made me think: are we sitting on our faith?  Does God both expect more of us, and provides the 'more'? Yes, the Church embodies tradition, but it is always changing by the grace of the Spirit. I remember our outdoor 'living' Christmas pageant with real people and live animals. At Christmas Eve, who can forget singing "It came upon the midnight clear," authored by the Weston Unitarian pastor of over 160 years ago? Blizzards came and blizzards went. One late Christmas Eve our car was almost invisible under the snow. Carol and John Everett's VW hauled us home to Rolling Lane. Could you imagine the stir now if Buzzy and Jack burned old Christmas trees in the back of the parking lot because it was the night of the Epiphany, January 6th? They would be polluting the skies, warming the earth! But at Pentecost, we sent an origami white dove down a balcony wire! And I, a low churchman, wore the Wells's gift of a sterling silver cross. Tradition with a twist? That is how time passed even as I held some YaleDivinitySchool, local and diocesan posts, as well as hosting two religious radio programs in Boston. Stephen, I brought four stoles to wear today, because as you can see, life in "the tur­moil years" was like a family trying to present its best self, which includes the shad­ows I mentioned earlier. I wear the purple stole for the primary Advent season. The white is Lee's gift; the one I wore at the consecration. Philippa Grover's stole is made of pink and gray - where did she ever dream up those colors? She knew how much I loved Ephesians 4:15 and how often I quoted it: “speaking the truth in love." The stole was so long I tripped over it, so she cut out the "speaking" and sewed it up again. She knew that I could not always speak the truth, nor always love everybody, nor be loved. The fourth, a professional hand-quilted white stole, was given me by my next church on my tenth. How do we meet all that life offers? Clergy are no different than anyone else. You all may finally come to realize that. I kid Mary King that we once lived on Royalty Row: there were the Ferros, Sultans, Kings, and Earles. Some of our lives we rejoice about, like today. But it all means some good and some bad when life doesn't turn out the way we'd planned. How else do you celebrate 50 years? The Lord Jesus, lying in his mother's arms, didn't see a 50th - barely a 30th• The glorious Temple in Jerusalem took 60 years to build, but was destroyed 5 years after it was finished. Tradition under the Roman empire! But think of the glorious company we all have been a part of with the Lord Jesus: prostitutes, zealots, fishermen, tax collectors, the wounded, prophets, businessmen, businesswomen, peacemakers, leaders of churches, those in the pews that never got to preach once, those who have laid healing hands on family and strangers alike. We are mailmen, truck farmers, salesmen, service people, teachers ... each of us. This 50th is a triumph in the midst of our human mix of blessings, hard times, sorrows and glories. Welcome home, each of you! Rejoice, with all your heart! Philip S. Krug

Welcome! You Are Invited!

Welcome! You are Invited!