"Palm Weekend" in Images

This view (roughly east-by-northeast from the southeast corner of 55th St & 6th Ave) more or less captures the role of the church in the city.
Both FAPC (shown above) and Redeemer strive, in their different strains of Presbyterianism, to be churches in and for the city. I have always felt that FAPC appealed more to the heart, and Redeemer more to the mind. This is still true, even with FAPC's tremendous turnover in pastors (only one remains from Advent 1999, when I first attended a service there), and it is ultimately why I returned to FAPC after what we might call a serious extended flirtation with Redeemer.

Today, this Palm Sunday, was the first time in quite a while that FAPC's sanctuary was filled nearly to capacity at the 11:15 service. Of course it was not only Palm Sunday, but also a Eucharist day (we unfortunately celebrate the Eucharist only once a month), and also the baptism of 9 infants. The baptisms likely drew their own familial crowds, of course, and yet it is still a good sign.

A digression about the baptisms: there was a lot of screaming and wailing from the infants this time. It always makes me smile wryly in sympathy because of three distinct thoughts that course through my brain simultaneously: (i) it really is difficult for any of us to fully accept God's grace; as grown-ups, we don't literally kick and scream and gnash our teeth, but boy do we resist it sometimes; (ii) the infants' wailing suggests despair or existential angst, as if they instinctively knew that they are born sinners; (iii) if they knew what they were in for as Christians, they'd cry even harder.

The closing hymn was "All Glory, Laud and Honor," one of my all-time favorites. I'd have loved to have some live trumpets in there, but at least our guest organist pulled out all the stops and did us proud. It almost made up for the travesty of the re-written Doxology, which has somehow survived our most recent music director's departure. Almost.

A few images from "Palm Saturday" (or "April Fool's Eve" for the secular among us):

Margaret and Jane, volunteering at the pancake breakfast for the homeless. (Jane's sweatshirt was cute, though its glory is cloaked by a black apron here. She reminds me very much of Elizabeth, the incredibly sweet woman my grandfather eventually met and married after my grandmother died.)
Some of the eggs decorated at Table 4, by Edwin, Ismel, and Julie. The picture actually does not do the eggs full justice, because the bright flash obliterated the lovely gradations in color resulting from dipping different parts of an egg for different periods of time, drawing on the eggs with crayon before dipping them, etc. However, if you look closely at the darker blue egg, you may see a circle with lines radiating out from it; that was quite nice (though still subtle) in real life. And on the pink egg in the lower right, you can see the "JUL" on an egg dedicated by Ismel to Julie.


After the pancake breakfast, I had to rush home to cook some lunch for my mahjong party (buying the ingredients on the way). The good news about mahjong was that Carolyn and I were tied for "3rd place" or the "bronze medal" (i.e., neither of us won a single hand). Patricia won 5 rounds as compared with Stella's 4 victories, so they get the gold and silver medals, respectively.

Gold, bronze, silver:

Bronze, bronze, silver: