Sister Mary Alternative

my dog in the newspaper!

2008-06-17T19:55:00.003-04:00

my dog, music, is the pretty one looking directly at the camera and posing. this was in today's ny post.

ON any given Sunday at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side, the choir sings a melodic hymn while one congregant chimes in with an enthusiastic jangle of his collar.

He's Music, a golden retriever and regular parishioner. And he's not the only dog in attendance; he's joined by four fellow canines and their human counterparts as they all celebrate in harmony.

Dogs have come a long way - once made to stay outside, they're welcome at some stores, hotels, boutiques. And now, church.

While dogs have

traditionally been allowed in churches for the Blessing of the Animals each October, many congregations are now welcoming canines at weekly services.

"It started because a parishioner was sick one weekend and felt like she could either take her dog for a walk or go to church, but not both," says the Rev. Michael Phillips, rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity.

"Then she thought, 'Why not combine them?' and she brought her dog to church. It's been happening ever since."

Music's owner

Jennifer Goodnow understands how some outsiders might be surprised by the multispecies congregation.

"I met a newcomer once who started going to the 8 o'clock service, and she thought it was a service for the blind because there were so many dogs," says Goodnow.

The majority of dog-toting parishioners claim they bring their pets to church as family members, rather than guests. "We're pretty active in this church," says Pam Synk, a Holy Trinity parishioner for more than 15 years and owner of Goldie, a yellow Lab.

"You start becoming more active when you're pulled in by your children. You try to make it a fun, family place for them, and the dog is part of our family, so we all go together."

What does the nonpet-owning population think about the canine addition? Phillips says that in his three years as rector, he has heard only one complaint, from a parishioner who suffered from allergies to pet dander. Otherwise, the animals have been welcomed with open arms.

"You come to church to have good thoughts, not be cross," says Kit Bradshaw, a 90-year-old dog-free congregant.

There's even potential for pup proselytizing. "Rocco is my neighbor's dog," says Goodnow, pointing to the Boston terrier sprawled in the aisle. "He is culturally Jewish but not practicing. I think he's ripe for conversion because every time I take him, he just stares at the altar with his jaw open. He is so into it."

Rocco's conversion will have to wait for another day, because the Mass has come to an end.

The choir has paraded down the center of the church in a final, thunderous song. The altar boys followed behind, and as the clergy came to the end of the aisle, each reached down in acknowledgement of their furriest congregants with pats on the head.

nun sighting - when it rains, it pours!

2008-06-02T20:03:00.002-04:00

i was just thinking the other day that i hadn't seen a nun in a week or two and then boom! two in two days.
saw a nun getting on the crosstown bus at 86th and 3rd this a.m. as i was on my way to work.
in other news, i was hoping to visit the order of the holy paraclete's convent in swaziland where they run an orphanage for girls but i don't have the money for the very costly plane ticket. the taxes alone are $350! someone suggested that i ask people for their frequent flyer miles to be donated. hmmmmm.... asking for help. not an easy thing for a wasp like me. but, i'll pray about it. i really want to go this summer. please do pray for me.

nun sighting ... with a twist!

2008-06-01T21:25:00.002-04:00

b/c this time i was on my way to visit a nun i know on her 50th anniversary of profession and i saw a completely different nun walking up 110th street - not part of the order i was about to visit! this was a catholic nun (50-50 suit w/veil). so, i saw a nun en route to see other nuns!
meanwhile, i enjoyed my tea with the nuns of community of the holy spirit and celebrated sr. mary christabel on her anniversary. she's a sage nun. i hope to be like her. wouldn't it be great to be a wise woman?
i'm noticing that most of my social occasions these days include priests and nuns.
hmmmmmm.....

eddie izzard on religion

2008-05-21T20:54:00.001-04:00

i got this from the liturgy website and it's freakin hilarious. love eddie izzard.

spring in nyc

2008-05-17T12:04:00.002-04:00

i am blissed out, sitting in my backyard, in a sunny spot. it's a beautiful day and we aren't having a good stretch of those this spring so i'm extra appreciative.

i was thinking this a.m. about people's stereotypes about nuns. i went to catholic school for nursery school until 8th grade. in the upper elementary school grades and middle school years, basically 4th - 8th grades, i had some really mean nuns for teachers. they couldn't hit us anymore (although one of my friends who grew up in the same neighb at the same time as i did but went to a different catholic school did have hitting nuns) so they humiliated us and yelled at us something fierce. it scared the hell out of me. and they were just ugly, mean women with god on their side, or so it seemed to us at the time. i'm sure they had little or no vocation to teaching and to the religious life but were tithed by their families and had less vocation to be nurses so we got stuck with them.
for high school i went to a private episcopal convent school and the nuns there were a whole other ball game. they treated us with respect. they were kind. they never yelled at us. they were patient with our teenaged ways. if i hadn't gone to that school and experienced those nuns i would probably have had a much more difficult time dealing with my own call to the religious life.
i would like to be the nun who changes people's ideas aobut nuns. i don't mean i'm going to be "cool." i'm not cool now i'm sure. but, i am quirky. and i'll keep being quirky. i'm also the most aquarian aquarius ever which can be a lot for others to handle.
i'm getting more and more ready all the time. i'm enjoying my life here but i'm starting to count down the days as it were.

nun sighting

2008-05-15T18:11:00.002-04:00

a catholic nun with a peaked veil coming out of staples as i was walking in. this is a lot! every nun sighting i've had is a completely different nun. i never see the same nun twice. some people tell me that i see so many nuns b/c i have a sharp eye out for nuns b/c of my calling. i think that's pretty skeptical. no one in the u.s. sees this many nuns. i mean, really! sounds like the universe is telling me something.

nun sighting

2008-05-13T18:29:00.001-04:00

a regular catholic nun in a suit from filene's basement and a white veil as i was coming out of tasti dlite on east 86th street. these nun sightings are really starting to wrack up!

nun sighting

2008-05-10T16:45:00.003-04:00

but only if seeing a buddhist nun counts. she was walking down b'way past the duane reade. i think it counts.
also, i had a dream last night that i was visiting order of the holy paraclete in whitby, yorkshire. i was very happy and excited but also nervous - like the first day of first grade kind of feeling. i had to remind myself in the dream that i was only visiting for a couple of weeks, not moving in yet.
the funny thing is, when i did visit ohp a few years ago, i had an ego freakout and instead of hearing the small, still voice and the "ah, i'm home" feeling that i had hoped for, i heard a squeaky, shrieking voice in my head as i crossed the threshold saying, "I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!" like in monty python or something! so, i'm taking this dream to be propheticish.
when i live in spain, it'll be easier and cheaper for me to visit england and africa so i hope to take a couple of trips to each.
the first time i went, i was freezing ... in august. i had my little heater on. i shivered, my fingers were cold, i wore sweaters and jackets. not my ideal weather. we shall see.

my plan so far

2008-05-08T18:16:00.003-04:00

well, i was hoping to go to swaziland this summer to visit order of the holy paraclete's orphanage for girls in bulembu village. however, i don't have the money for the plane ticket right now so we'll see. if not this summer, i certainly have plenty of other vacations as a teacher so plenty of other opportunities to visit.
meanwhile, i'm working on a plan to transition from this life to that one. i want to live in europe again before i enter the convent. i also want to be warm. i am a heat-seeking missile, a delicate hot house rose. so, i'm working out a plan to move to spain in a year and a bit. i probably can't teach english b/c i don't have e.u. citizenship, despite my qualifications (a masters in teaching english to speakers of other languages). i could tutor and teach online university like phoenix u. and i want to write. i have a couple of good stories in me. i'm thinking of doing this for a year or so. a gap year if you will. i will bring my dog and my bunny. i will sell everything i own. i will give up my life here, which i am getting ready to do. nyc is not for the middle class anymore. i can't afford it here as a single school teacher. i'd also like to live a slower-paced lifestyle than nyc. a mediterranean (sp?) lifestyle.
so far i am torn between moving to barcelona and seville. barcelona is colder. seville is right on the beach. barcelona has an anglican church with a woman rector. there's most likely a bigger expat scene in barcelona (my spanish sucks and i'm not going to have an easy time making friends with natives, plus, my experience of living abroad has taught me that i need american and english-speaking friends who get my humor and whose humor i get). barcelona is more expensive. i guess i could live in both places. i guess i don't have to make this decision right now.
i do enjoy imagining my dog and i walking along la playa. she is getting old - 10 and a half. i have to wait for her to die before i can enter the religious life! can't bring her with me to the convent. bunny bun bun will like spain too, i'm sure. he'll just hate getting there.
i'm going to flippin' love it!

nun sighting

2008-05-03T22:38:00.002-04:00

i went to trader joe's today (usually a nightmare b/c it's so crowded w/new yorkers i want to push my cart into people's ankles) and i saw a couple of the missionaries of charity (the mo. teresa nuns) loading boxes of food from the service entry of t.j. into a van. i confirmed w/an employee, t.j. gives their excess food to the missionaries of charity. what a mazel!

nun sighting

2008-04-28T18:54:00.002-04:00

saw a nun in blue habit w/white veil on 3rd ave. and 85th street. white veils used to mean a nun was a novice, but not with all habits and some orders have pretty much gotten rid of the term novice and are just sisters.

michael o'sullivan

2008-04-25T23:24:00.002-04:00

i've noticed from my sitemeter thingy that you've visited my blog. i'd enjoy catching up with you - i want to hear how you've been! email me at episcogeekatyahoodotcom
jen

a second graders immigration story

2008-03-26T17:37:00.002-04:00

i was reading a chapter from a book called the drinking gourd about a family of runaway slaves in the 19th century. they are walking from the south to canada to be free. the kids were really into the novel and didn't want it to stop at the end of the chapter. they are second graders and just developing an understanding of concepts like slavery. we talked about slavery in the u.s. and how hard it was for families like the one in the novel to walk all the way to canada with small children.
one of my kids raised his hand and said, my family walked from mexico to the united states when i was 7. we were caught by the police and sent back to mexico, then we walked back again. wow. that hit me like a ton of bricks. i know that many of my students made a tough journey to come here, but a lot of them were born here. this is also the age when kids start making the connection between characters in a book and their own lives. a lot of children's literature is about issues like being teased or bullied or having a baby sibling. this is a whole different level.

nun sightings

2008-03-08T22:56:00.005-05:00

ever since i was called to the religious life i started seeing nuns around nyc. i see them on the subway, on the bus, at the symphony, riding bikes in the park, at the airport, random nun sightings. if i lived in ireland or rome this might be considered normal. in nyc there simply aren't that many nuns. they all seem to condense within my line of vision. at first i used to think it was god pressuring me to keep my vocation in mind or hurry up and become a nun. that is so not god's way. that would be my way if i were god so it's a good thing i'm not. thank god for god.
i often hear god speak to me through other people and i was telling a woman about how i see nuns everywhere and how at one point i was seeing three different nuns a week for several weeks. i mean, the average new yorker could go their whole lives these days without running into a nun. this woman said to me, how comforting of god to send you a reminder of your vocation. suddenly the nun sightings seemed less like a pressure stunt from god and more like, "i've got you covered. just so you remember what's important. keep your eye on the prize."
i decided i'd start documenting my nun sightings on this blog.
i saw a nun walking down 72nd street as i was passing by on the 2nd ave. bus last week. this pretty much doesn't count because i know that there is a convent on 72nd street between 2nd and 3rd avenues. that's too easy.
i saw two nuns in those mother theresa white with blue trim habits (can't remember the name of her order as i'm not catholic) just missing the r train as the doors closed at the lexingon avenue subway station on friday.
i never say anything to the nuns i see. but i think in my head, oh, you're my nun of the week, my reminder of what is important. thank you, sister.

a kick@ss lent

2008-03-05T21:55:00.003-05:00

this lenten season is rockin for me. i don't give things up for lent - so far i believe that i will not only not grow spiritually if i give up chai - in fact, anyone in a 20 ft. radius of me would suffer for 40 days and nights. instead of giving things up, i take on a spiritual practice. sometimes it's yoga or meditation or praying the psalms daily.
my church recently joined a group called manhattan together. it's part of the industrial areas foundation. manhattan together is a consortium of congregations and social work organizations that listen to people's needs and work together to help get those needs taken care of. so, rather than us upper east siders stepping into harlem, say, and telling people, "you need x, y, and z and we are here to give it to you." like lady bountiful, we get to know our community and neighbors and ask them what they need and then look to our people power - resources, networks, sheer numbers - to make something happen.
a classic story is when some people who lived in a large apt. building in the bronx went to their parish priest saying, we need improvements in our apartments. they drew up an inventory of each apt. and what needed repairing and brought it to the (notorious) landlord who said he would fix it. and then he sent the tenants a letter stating that homeland security had asked for each tenant's name, social security number, address, and telephone number. one family moved out in the middle of the night but the rest went to the priest who went to the bronx version of manhattan together and they called their contacts at the housing authority and by the end of the story all the repairs were made and the tenants, who by working together got to know each other really well, had a big party.
this is a long way to describing my supercool lent but what we're doing at my church for lent is talking with each other to determine what issues come up for members of the congregation (almost all of us live in the neigb. of the church). now, i have been a parishioner at my church for 27 years - since i was 12 - and i am having conversations with people i have known most of my life that i have never had before. i'm learning about what really matters to people, what they notice about the neighborhood, about injustices large and small. the conversations are one-on-one and it's so amazing to see these people pairing off at coffee hour and talking. after the one-on-one i see these duos then walking out of church together, still talking, down the block, into the healthfood store, still talking. it's remarkable. i feel blessed and honored to be able to listen as people tell me what their lives are like or what they notice around us.
when we're done with our one-on-ones at church, we're going to talk with our neighbors in the community - there's a public h.s. and a housing project down the block. should be interesting to get to know the people we see all the time but don't know.
if you do lent, i hope yours is as kick butt as mine. i love lent. it's so quiet and soft. gentle and purple.

facts about swaziland

2008-02-09T16:57:00.000-05:00

i am planning to go visit a convent in swaziland this summer - god willing. my plan is to use my tax refund (amount still unknown until i get my butt to my accountant) to pay for the trip. it's seriously expensive. no cheap flights to africa, i can tell you. they don't have those good relations with the middle east and their oil. and they can't invade like we did to get affordable gas.
i went to the cia world factbook to find out info about swaziland and this is what i found:
Population:
1,133,066
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2007 est.)

Age structure:
0-14 years: 40.3% (male 230,238/female 226,184)
15-64 years: 56.1% (male 304,899/female 331,036)
65 years and over: 3.6% (male 15,870/female 24,839) (2007 est.)

Population growth rate:
-0.337% (2007 est.)

Birth rate:
26.98 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Death rate:
30.35 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)

the fact that their death rate exceeds their birth rate is a shocker. i can't imagine what i will find when i go there. i have lived in europe and asia, and those were eye opening experiences for me (americans are so isolated). but, i've never been to the african continent, let alone sub-saharan africa.

the convent i'm visiting is a branch of the order of the holy paraclete whose mother house is in york, england. i went there a few years ago and felt ... odd, other. first of all it's freakin' cold there! i had my heater on in august. and the nuns, who are great, all had these posh accents so the daily office sounded like, "oh lohd, heayah ouwah prayah." all soft vowels and no final r's. when we drop our final r on the east coast of the u.s. it's a whole different thing.
the convent in swaziland have recently moved to a village called bulembu where they are running a girl's orphanage. i am very interested in that, and in teaching.
we'll see.

gratitude

2008-02-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

i had an exhausting weekend - i had my own birthday party sat. night. my birthday is feb. 17 but that's during lent so i had my party two weeks early b/c i don't party during lent. i love lent - it's so quiet and soft. it's like the time between when i wake up before i get out of bed - 5 more minutes. i snuggle into my blankets and cuddle with the dog and it's soft and quiet and dark. lent to me is like 40 days of 5 more minutes and instead of cuddling with the dog, i'm burrowing in with god.
anyway, i had some friends over last night - very casual. then, sun. afternoon i hosted my godson connor's 9th birthday party. fortunately the weather here has been warm so the kids played outside in my backyard for a lot of the party. the kids at the party were connor's school friends, but mostly kids from church - his mom, mary and i grew up at our church and now we teach sun. school together and connor is in our class. it was nice to see the kids from our sun. school class in another setting than our classroom or even church.
at one point i was taking some garbage down to the basement and i was struck with a feeling of gratitude for my life, the life i've created, the community that i have through church and my friends.
i grew up with a family that had such pain and secrets they all had to medicate themselves thoroughly to be able to get through their day to day existense while carrying their pain. as a result, they were all unaware of the danger and pain i was in growing up. but, they are all gone now, thank god. i don't miss any of my family, i don't miss their dis-ease. and i have created a life for myself of friends, community, joy.
the trick is to enjoy my life while not trying to hold onto it. i can live it, one day at a time, but my life as it is now is not forever. and that's ok.

what the?

2008-01-17T20:24:00.000-05:00

some guy made a horror movie ...
about vagina dentata ...
and called it Teeth!!!!!

i just watched the preview and i may never stop laughing.

it reminds me of my favorite margaret atwood poem:
you fit into me

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye

no nunsense

2008-01-11T19:07:00.000-05:00

i read in a book about nuns (sorry, can't remember the title or i'd reference it here) that in the oldie moldie days, when the catholics had 10 or more children, they would "tithe" one or two of their children to the church so you'd grow up your whole life hearing, "bobby, you're going to be a priest when you grow up." and "mary jane, you're going to be a nun." and it didn't matter if you had a vocation or not. living the religious life with no vocation makes one the meanest 5th grade math teacher ever. when i read that, a lot fell into place and made sense for me - i think many of my elementary school teachers might not have been called to the religious life.
nowadays, it's no longer the pride of a family to have clergy or monastics among your children. people ask me, "why would you want to be a nun and give everything up?" i am less intrigued with the "everything" that people are talking about. i am not called to marriage. i may have family life, but in an alternative way. there is no nuclear family in america anymore anyway.
in the west, nuns, monks, and priests are fewer but they have sure vocations. they make the choice, rather than having it thrust on them as in the past. this makes for a different kind of nun. also, people are called later in life, after living independently and alone. used to be you'd go from your father's house to the convent. from following your mother's rules to your reverend mother's rules. now the transition to obedience is not so easy (ok, i don't know that it was "easy" back then).
what's a 30 something (rapidly approaching 40 something) woman to do? guess i'll find out when the time is right.

taking care

2008-01-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

my boyfriend and i broke up last week. we'd been together over three years - the longest i've been with anyone by a very long stretch. we're working out how to be friends - he's so important to me and i want to be friends.
i spent my entire life taking care of my mother's feelings, because she couldn't. then i took care of john's feelings, because he couldn't. now i have no one to take care of other than myself and i believe that it is time for me to take care of me and only me as i become more and more ready for my new life.
i've cut my hair into what i dub my "nun haircut." i've stopped coloring my hair for the first time since i was 19 years old. i've stopped wearing make up. and now i've left my romantic relationship.
in my past, i used to try to fill up the god-sized hole in my life with a man. i used to look to men to make everything better for me, everything from my past. i stopped doing that several years ago. now i have a man-sized hole instead of a god-sized hole. that is more manageable.
i truly believe that when something leaves our lives, there is that much more room for the universe to fill up that space with something better. i think that space is more room for me. more room for god.
i want to go to bulembu as early as possible. maybe by my next vacation, which is during lent. i would love to be in africa for lent.

sitemeter

2007-12-27T17:37:00.000-05:00

i have this application on this blog called sitemeter. it captures information about the people who look at the blog. i can't see anyone's name or address, but i can see where they are from and what they typed into a google search or whatever that got them to my blog. a lot of people get to my blog by typing in "th words" and "if mohammed can't come to the mountain." i also know that my ex-boyfriend from a village of 850 souls in county clare, ireland is looking at my blog occasionally, and since i can't find him (when you google jen goodnow you get this blog. when you google michael o'sullivan you get way way too much stuff) i reached out via the blog to ask him to email me so i can apologize for the past.
the other thing i've noticed is that people from all over the world read this blog. i find that fascinating beyond belief. people from saudi arabia, australia, europe, africa - not so many south americans or asians.
frequently people from lambeth, england read the blog. that causes me to believe it's the archbishop of canterbury's secret police. that the anglican version of the da vinci code people are checking up on all the blogging anglicans in the world. i'm sure it's some bored administrator in lambeth palace who thought, "what would happen if it typed into a search engine ...?" but it's a little creepy.

fostering fears

2007-10-13T19:04:00.000-04:00

i have to take 30 hours of parenting classes to get certified so i can foster a child. every time i go to class i think of a new worst case scenario. last week it was, "what if she's in a gang?" as a single woman, i'm not sure if i can handle some of the possible issues like - what if she abandons her baby in my home? what if she hurts my pets? what if she hurts me?
i am the only white person in the class. there's only one man, so i almost feel a kind of kindred with him because not an opportunity to rip men apart passes by unused. the antipathy towards white people does not go spoken (until last week) so i can only feel the vibe from some people. it makes me upset, hurt, angry. but, i also feel naive for experiencing racism and prejudice for the first time by the age of 38. what if i and my neighborhood are too white for this girl? it's pretty white here. i am pretty white. i'm so white, i'm an episcopalian for crying out loud!
it reminds me of my own racism. i'm not naive enough to pretend that i hold absolutely zero racism in my heart. as the song from avenue q goes, everyone's a little bit racist.
if i foster a black teenager and her baby, will racism be removed from me? if i live in africa in my vocation and work with aids orphans, will the racism be removed?
one of my favorite gospel stories is the canaanite woman who asks christ for healing for her daughter and he says it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs. she has a quick wit and replies "Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." and he tells her she has great faith and heals her daughter. to me that means that jesus learns and learns from a woman - a foreign or different woman no less. as a child i believed that jesus was perfect and always perfect. as an adult, i encounter a jesus who can learn, who can change his attitude, his prejudice. this is one of the reasons i am a christian (as opposed to say, a buddhist). jesus, son of man, has humanity, makes mistakes, but is open-hearted enough to learn and enlarge his heart. christ is a good model for me to follow.

how many earths am i using?

2007-09-29T10:58:00.001-04:00

i've been hearing about this game on npr called consumer consequences. the idea is that you play a "game" and answer questions about your consumer use to see how many planet earths it would take to sustain the population if everyone on earth lived like you. i am pretty green and even with my cutbacks - i don't buy anything new, i unplug everything in my home when i'm not using it and cut my gas and electric bill in half, i buy only local and organic food - if everyone lived like me it would take 1.7 planets to sustain us. uh-oh.
here's the link. i highly encourage you to play it. it shows your score but then offers suggestions for how to improve your score/consumer lifestyle.
consumer consequences

mother-child fostering

2007-09-27T21:03:00.000-04:00

i am applying to foster a teenager. i decided a teenager made sense because by the time i'm ready to go to a convent the child will have aged out of foster care. one of the options with a teenager is a teen in foster care who has had a baby. it's called mother-child fostering.
i went to my first class on parenting a foster child. i have to complete 30 hours of training. i was the only white person out of 21 participants. almost everyone else had fostered unofficially (family members and their kids' friends) or officially. is it a cultural thing that white people don't do foster so much? i felt like i was representing god's frozen people.
i have so many concerns, worries, and fears around this that i have decided to turn over each step along the path towards fostering to god. first i have to take these classes. i have to get certified and licensed and that requires multiple steps. i will just keep turning it over.
what if the child is so angry that she is violent with me, my dog, or my rabbit?
what if she abandons her baby with me and runs away?
what if she hates me and is mean?
what if my race, neighborhood, culture is all too white for her and she is miserable?

i am trying to think also what if we make a happy family? what if she's scared? what if she's gentle and shy? what if she's vulnerable and needs help? what if she's happy here? i'm trying to imagine that. happy families with teen, baby, puppy, bunny, backyard, park, school, church.

last sunday at grace cathedral

2007-08-19T21:45:00.001-04:00

last week i went to church at grace catherdral where i heard mary haddad preach this sermon on beauty, taize, and the movie, cabaret. this was appropriate for me b/c i saw the movie cabaret when i was 3 years old (i'd like to say i came from a progressive family, i really was raised by wolves however) and i decided to be sally bowles when i grew up. so, i went to prague and i did become sally for a while.
i enjoyed grace cathedral, but the next time i go to s.f. i'm going to st. gregory of nyssa which has really amazing icons all throughout the space and is totally hip and liberal and joyous. sometimes i get bogged down by the tradition and god's frozen people-ness of the episcopal church.