Volume 53, July 2023

Everything Belongs

I receive a daily meditation in my Inbox every morning from three different sources. I read them all before I get out of bed-- as soon as the alarm goes.

One of my daily meditations comes from the Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr. He had one entry last week that has stuck with me. His theme was the ‘oneness’ of things and he wrote:

Once we have learned to discern the real and disguised nature of both good and evil, we recognize that everything is broken and fallen, weak and poor—while still being the dwelling place of God: you and me, our countries, our children, our marriages, and even our churches, mosques, and synagogues. That is not a put-down of anybody or anything, but actually creates the freedom to love imperfect things.

As Jesus told the rich young man, “God alone is good” (Mark 10:18). We cannot wait for things to be totally perfect to fall in love with them, or we will never love anything. Now, instead, we can love everything!

Rohr’s meditation put me in mind of a struggle I went through some thirty years ago when I found myself out of sorts personally with my beloved church—the Episcopal Church—in which I was ordained and have spent my life. It was a time when I actively thought of converting to the Roman Catholic Church where I thought authority might be clearer and life more peaceful.

I’m not sure what held me back. Perhaps possibly fear. I told my old Rector, Father William Ralston, of Savannah, of my intention to ‘swim the Tiber’. His response was electrifying. He told me if I did, he would come and find me wherever I was, and drop me into the nearest river. (Well, that would have been some feat—as I was both much younger and bigger).

Shortly after my confession, he wrote an article in his Parish Paper titled: A Swimming Lesson: Don’t Go In The Water.  His article argued that in plain truth “the whole state of Christ’s Church does not exist in its essential purity in any institutional adumbration anywhere on earth”. (Whether intended for me or not the article stopped my developing intention to ‘swim the Tiber’).

He went on to argue his conviction that the living visible Church has often in her history entertained passionate and serious battles and controversies, and this has been sometimes preferable to a placid Church in which no one is passionate about discovering the truth. He said that one of the ironies in the New Testament he loved most is St Paul’s exhortation to live peacefully with all men, “as much as lieth in you”. “Since St Paul seldom lived peacefully with anyone for very long—least of all with himself—the irony is delightful. It represents an aspiration contrary to fact.”

The article ended with Father Ralston drawing an impression of the two founding fathers of our Church and reminding that they did not always agree or get on with one another easily. St Paul boasts of withstanding St Peter to his very face. Perhaps it was not attractive of St Paul to say this even if we might agree he was in the right. St Peter, obviously easier to get along with, simply remarked that “brother Paul” says many things difficult to understand and is liable to being misunderstood. (Based on these portraits of the two apostles, I know that by temperament at least--- I identify with St Peter).

Last month ended with the joint feast day of SS Peter and Paul who, despite all their differences were united in their discipleship to the Lord. According to tradition, they were both martyred on the same day, June 29, in Rome.

Pray that the Lord may so strengthen us that we may serve him in unity, constancy, and peace.

Douglas Dupree 

The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

THE FEAST OF ST MARY MAGDALENE,

APOSTLE TO THE APOSTLES

July 22, 2023

‘I have seen the Lord.’

--- John 20.18

Mary Magdalene was one of the original Galilean disciples of Jesus and the most eminent of the many women who followed Jesus in his itinerant ministry. We do not know a lot about her origins; she is characterized simply as “a woman from whom seven demons had gone out.” All four Gospels name Mary among the women who followed Jesus to the Cross and witnessed his passion and death. It was also these women who went to his tomb on the day after the sabbath to anoint his body.

The women found an empty tomb and were charged by an angel to tell the disciples to meet the Lord back in Galilee. In the Gospels of John and Matthew Mary Magdalene sees the Risen Lord. Her encounter ends with Jesus instructing her to ‘go tell my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ And so, Mary goes out to the disciples and says, ‘I have seen the Lord’. She was the disciple who first proclaimed the good news to the Twelve. Thus, she has often been called the ‘Apostle to the Apostles.'

In recent years the Church has made a consistent effort to restore the view of Mary Magdalene as basically presented above, i.e., as a witness to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and as the one chosen by the Risen Lord to proclaim the good news to the other disciples. This effort has been made against the headwinds of a long-established tradition or cult of Mary Magdalene as a repentant sinner based on linking her name to the unnamed sinner in Luke 7 and again to the unnamed woman of ill repute who bathed Jesus’ feet with tears and wiped them with her hair in Matthew 7. Also, along the way, Mary Magdalene got confused with the many other women named Mary in the Gospels, including Martha’s sister.

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St. Mary Magdalene

Master of the Magdalene Legend, Saint Mary Magdalene Preaching

(c. 1500-20: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia)

Book Reviewand Advance Notice:

Spires in the Sun by Jonathan Rich

Spires in the Sun: The Carpenter Gothic Episcopal Churches of Florida, written by Jonathan Rich and photographed by Phil Eschbach, will be published by Frederic C. Beil, Savannah, GA on October 24, 2023. A work of nonfiction, Spires in the Sun celebrates the Upjohn-style rural wooden churches raised by the Episcopal Church in Florida in the 1800s. Given the era involved, the book is also a history of the germinal years of the Diocese of Florida.

Measuring 8 1/2 by 11 inches, this is a beautiful, hardcover book of the highest production values, with a dust jacket and Smyth sewn binding. It consists of over 500 pages of text with interspersed historical black-and-white photographs and contemporary color photographs by Phil Eschbach (with these images appearing on practically every page). In addition, the book includes a table of all the Carpenter Gothic Episcopal churches originally built in Florida (including their names, construction dates, and their eventual fate, i.e., current state of existence/nonexistence, preservation, modification, etc.). The book also includes endnotes, a bibliography, a glossary of relevant architectural and ecclesiastical terminology, and an index. 

Spires in the Sun offers:

• An intimate description of a typical Florida Episcopal church of the "Carpenter Gothic" style. This section describes and illustrates the style's defining characteristics.
• A brief recounting of the advent and early development of the Episcopal Church in Florida. This section covers a time when the entire state held fewer than ten churches that between them could not afford to support a bishop.
• A tracing of the life of John Freeman Young, second Bishop of Florida, including his working affiliations with noted Gothic Revival architects Richard Upjohn, Frank Wills, Charles Haight, and Robert Schuyler. This section describes how Bishop Young was chiefly - but not solely - responsible for bringing the Carpenter Gothic style to Florida.
• An explanation of significant influences of the time, such as the Oxford Movement, the Gothic Revival, and ecclesiology, all of which affected the construction of churches highlighted in the book.
• An examination of the prominent role of women in the fundraising campaigns to build the churches.
• Detailed profiles of thirty-nine surviving, well-preserved nineteenth-century Carpenter Gothic Episcopal churches in Florida. In these, we are told how each church was dreamt of, planned, and built by its original mission members. Among the churches profiled in this manner are St. Margaret's, Hibernia; St. Mary's, Green Cove Springs; Grace, Orange Park; All Saints, Huntington (now Kidane Mihret, Normandy Boulevard); Old St. Paul's (now San Marco Preservation Hall); and St. Paul's by-the-Sea (now Beaches Museum Chapel).

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Early Beginnings: The Diocese of Florida

in the 19th Century

In the advance notice to his Spires in the Sun, the author Jonathan Rich writes that the book ‘celebrates the Upjohn-style rural wooden churches raised by the Episcopal Church in Florida in the 1800s. Given the era involved, the book is also a history of the germinal years of the Diocese of Florida.’

In the light of that history, I asked Jonathan Rich to tell me more about the episcopate of John Freeman Young, 2nd Bishop of Florida (from 1867-1885) and the challenges he faced soon after the devastation of the Civil War and the initial challenges he faced and about the latter years of his time in office. The article signifies the strength of the text of his new book.

Article by Jonathan Rich

The topic you referred to is treated at considerable length in our book, but I will try to summarize (and thereby do slight injustice to) it here.

First, as you know, in 1845, the year John Freeman Young was first sent to Florida as a missionary, the Diocese of Florida had grown to include nine churches: Trinity, Saint Augustine; Christ, Pensacola; St. John’s, Tallahassee; Saint Paul's, Key West; Saint Joseph’s, Saint Joseph; Trinity, Apalachicola; Saint Paul's, Quincy; Christ, Monticello; and St. John’s, Jacksonville. Of those nine, only two – Christ, Pensacola, and Saint John's, Tallahassee – were capable of supporting themselves financially.

 Skipping forward in the timeline, during the episcopate of Bishop Rutledge, the number of Episcopal clergymen officiating at Florida reached a record high of twelve, and eight new churches were organized. 

 Nine months after Bishop Rutledge‘s death, in 1867, when John Freeman Young was elected the second bishop of Florida, Florida’s economy had been devastated by the Civil War, and Young inherited an episcopate in ruin. Many Floridians had fled North, and they were slow to return. Florida homes and farms have been burned by Union soldiers. Churches too had suffered. In Jacksonville, as you know, St. John’s, which Young had finished constructing as a missionary, had been burned by Union troops. In Marietta, Union soldiers had also burned St. Luke’s. St. Mark's, Palatka, had been used by Union troops as a barracks and its interior ransacked. Surviving churches languished in disrepair. Episcopalians, like most of the population, were scattered, impoverished and dejected. The Diocese of Florida was so lifeless that the national Committee on the State of the Church pronounced it a “wonder” that the Episcopal Church in Florida still had “an organized existence at all.”

With such a start, the first ten years of Young's episcopate were “mainly a struggle for life.” At least twice, he had to beg benefactors in the North for financial aid. 

Thus, of the dozens of Florida churches profiled in Part Two of our book, none was built during Young‘s first decade as bishop except St. Margaret’s, Hibernia, which was originally the Fleming family's private chapel. (Possibly, some Episcopal churches were raised, but none of the ones profiled in Part Two of our book).

Young persevered, nonetheless, journeying across Florida to organize congregations, preach, administer communion, and conduct baptisms and confirmations. Our book, of course, describes many of his travels and efforts to establish missions during this time.



It was not until the end of Young‘s first decade as Bishop that the Gilded Age dawned in America, bringing unprecedented growth and economic expansion. With the boom, the outlook for Florida - and the Diocese - finally turned positive. As Young put it, “with the return of general prosperity” in 1877 came “the beginning of a considerable immigration to our state." Florida’s population jumped from 70,000 in 1845 to 528,000 in 1900, representing more than a sevenfold gain.

It was in 1877 that the pastoral seeds sown by Young during his lean first decade began to bear fruit. In a period of only five years, the missions he had nurtured erected some 25 wooden churches. By 1882, regular episcopal services were being held in at least 60 communities. Supervising 21 clergymen in the Diocese that year, Young realized he would need another 10 before the year's end.  

With Young’s foresight and leadership, the Diocese more than held pace with Florida's growth. Its membership swelled from 4,499 in 1880 to 9,317 in 1890. At the same time, the number of priests in the Diocese rose from 19 to 57, the number of parishes went from 14 to 19, and the number of missions grew from 10 to 81. 

History of St. John's Needlepoint

This article was originally written for newcomers to St John’s, Tallahassee and is shared here by kind permission of the author. I was interested to read it in the light of a new history of church kneelers available August 1, 2023: ‘Kneelers: The Unsung Folk Art of England and Wales by Elizabeth Bingham.

History of St. John’s Needlepoint

Since the needlepoint projects began and finished quite a few years ago, we have had many church members come and go. Many people do not know what the needlepoint represents or how it came about. It seems appropriate at this time to go over the history of how this project which enhances the beauty of our church began and progressed through the years.

The idea for the needlepoint cushions began when one of our members saw a similar project going on at Holy Trinity Episcopal in Gainesville. Annie Mary Moriarty brought the idea back to our rector, Lee Graham, who encouraged her to proceed with the project. She enlisted the aid of Jessie Conrad and Mildred Van Aken and in 1974 the work began. Each of the three ladies provided a skill in the way of artistry, money management and technical skills. 

The colors in the needlepoint were taken from the prayer rug that used to be in front of the altar and the designs depicted the seasons of the church (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and All Saints, Good Friday, Easter and Ascension Day, Pentecost and Trinity.). Additional cushions were stitched to use at weddings, for the bishop’s chair, two acolyte chairs, the sedilia and the ushers’ bench. The entire project took 18 months and was dedicated in 1976. As that was the bicentennial year of the founding of our country, St. John’s needlepoint was included in the Bicentennial Committee’s list of activities for the 200th anniversary of the United States. 

The kneelers in the pews represent the story of the Bible beginning on the very back row of the church with the Old Testament and the creation story. Selected stories of the Old Testament continue through row 5 (counting from back to front). Row 6 represents selections from the Book of Psalms and the New Testament begins on row 7 continuing through row 17 with stories of that time frame. The final row, 18, depicts saints of the church. 

Additional kneelers at the altar were needed once the altar table was moved away from the back wall and the rail enlarged. An artist from South Carolina was charged with creating complimentary designs. Added were the two corner kneelers and the three kneelers across the front. Using designs found in the stained glass and the woodwork, the corner kneelers show the passion flower and the Easter lily. The next two cushions are a mirror image of each other showing the Eucharist and taken from the Anderson windows on the Monroe Street entrance. The center cushion is Christ’s monogram also found in the Anderson windows located in the north transept. 

The work on these kneelers took many years due to the number of kneelers to be made and the unfortunate split of the church in which many of our valuable stitchers left St. John’s. At the beginning of this project the committee chairs were Virginia Perkins, Carrie Smith and Carroll Walker. After two of the three chairs were gone, Virginia was joined by Sally Kreimer who in addition to helping direct the project stitched all the framework around the designs. The additional designer was Linda Knox and was followed by Mary Ann Murphy of South Carolina on several final rows and the altar designs. Last but by no means least were Jeanne Cloud and Jay Lowe, our expert upholsterers. Ninety church members and a few who were not members did the stitching and two of them were men! The leather-bound book of dedication can be found on the chest in the north entry to the church. This lists each row with its subject matter and the dedication. There is also a map for locating a particular kneeler.

Virginia Perkins,

St. John’s Episcopal Church, Tallahassee

Photographs courtesy of Dennis Howard of St. John’s Episcopal Church, Tallahassee

July Book List

Philip C. Almond. Mary Magdalene: A Cultural History (Hardcover-February 2023).

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona. Mary Magdalene: A Visual History (Hardcover-2023).

Elizabeth Bingham. Kneelers: The Unsung Folk Art of England and Wales (Hardcover-

August, 2023).

George Willcox Brown III. A Catechism of Nature: Meditations on Creation’s Primary

Realities (Hardcover-2021). Fr Will Brown is a southern Georgia priest, hunter, fisherman,

naturalist and sometime conservationist.

Kate Moorehead Carroll. Healed: How Mary Magdalene Was Made Well (Paperback-January

2018).

Kate Cooper. Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions

(Hardcover-April 2023). Four women whose lives intersected with Augustine in his early life:

his mother Monnica of Thagaste; his lover; his fiancée; and Justina the empress of Rome.

Claire Gilbert. I Julian: The fictional autobiography of Julian of Norwich (Hardcover-August

15, 2023).

Sandy Tolan. The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Paperback-

2007).

The Archdeacon's Corner

Saint Stephen

Archdeacon and Martyr

Saint Stephen is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as one of seven (they would be later called deacons) appointed by the Apostles to distribute food and charitable aid to poorer members of the early church.

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food. So, the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” Acts 6:1-4

According to Orthodox belief, Stephen was the eldest and was called "archdeacon". Because another deacon, Nicholas of Antioch, is specifically stated to have been a convert to Judaism, it is assumed that Stephen was born Jewish, but nothing more is known about his previous life.

Stephen (Greek meaning "wreath or crown") is traditionally venerated as the protomartyr or first martyr of Christianity. Artistic representations often show Stephen as a young, beardless man, wearing a deacon's vestments, with a crown symbolizing his martyrdom. Many churches view Stephen as a saint, as does the Episcopal Church.

According to the Acts of the Apostles, he angered members of various synagogues by his teachings.

Now Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people. Certain members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen, Cyrenius, and Alexandrians, and people from Cilicia and Asia, came forward and debated with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke. Acts 6:8-10

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Register Today:

Pilgrimage to the Holy Land & Jordan

Oct. 24 - Nov. 4, 2023

"View the Promised Land from where Moses viewed it, then cross into the Promised Land close to where Joshua crossed!"

Join the Rev. Canon Douglas Dupree this fall on Oct. 24 - Nov. 4, 2023 on a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Jordan!

During this trip, you will delve into the truths as you learn from some traditions and historical teachings from thousands of years, but most of all from the Holy Bible. You will walk where Jesus walked, learn of the homeland for the Christian faith, and return home, never to be the same again!

Destinations include as Mt. Beatitudes, Megiddo National Park, Nazareth, Sea of Galilee, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and more!

To view the brochure, please click here. For more information, please contact the Rev. Canon Douglas Dupree: ddupree@diocesefl.org.

Christmas in July:

St. John's Cathedral Bookstore, Jacksonville