Dear Editor,
We celebrated the dedication of our new church on the Sunday following Thanksgiving. Our congregation was delighted to leave our temporary dwelling at the Unity Grange Hall and come to our new church comprised of a glass chapel connected to a round house. We built the new church after our former one burned to the ground.
The church sits on a hill and overlooks the bucolic pastures, ponds, small valley and herds of cows grazing on our hills in Halo, PA. In the glass chapel we become the environment because we see it all and feel it. However, some members of our congregation wanted a more meditative church. So, we also built a connecting American-style-Indian round house at the suggestion of my best friend Alice Bright Light who is a full-blooded Chippewa Indian from a reservation in North Dakota.
The round house has no windows except for one in the center of the arched roof which originally functioned to allow the smoke from the fire below to escape. Because the pews in the glass chapel are stationary, all our social functions, including our Coffee Hours, will be held in the round house. A fully equipped kitchen is attached to accommodate social functions.
We began our service with an excerpt from my husband’s oratorio “Eden.” Willie is a graduate of Bellingshire University in Sussex, England with a Ph.D. in music and is a highly respected composer in addition to being our choir master and organist. The excerpt was from Robert Herrick’s poem A Thanksgiving to God, For His House. The choir sang Willie’s music to perfection.
In our Coffee Hour after the service in the round house, we were delighted to hear Thundering Bear which is a four-person drumming group which performed traditional and new music. They were brought to Halo, PA from Alice Bright Light’s reservation in North Dakota by a grant from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies.
My sermon focused on the joy of creating a personality based on gratitude. We give thanks in a formal holiday every year on Thanksgiving, but our joy of life can be increased by celebrating our life year-round. There are studies which show that happiness is easier to achieve when we are grateful.
As I finished my sermon, I looked through the glass doors at the back of the chapel and saw a chauffeur driven black limousine pull up close to the church. Two young people dressed in black stepped out. The handsome young man wore a suit, shirt and tie all in black. The beautiful young woman wore a black-double-breasted-business suit. I walked to the back of the chapel to greet them.
“This is the third time we have been here. Many decades ago, we came to your father-in-law’s first sermon that he gave in his refurbished school bus. That’s how he started this church. We told him that we appreciated that his preaching was unique in only praising God’s love and nothing else. We know that the Reverend Silas Patriot DoGood then named his church The First Church of God’s Love.
The second time we were here was to bring the deceased Reverend Silas Patriot DoGood home because Alice Bright Light knew how to summon and bring him here from beyond but didn’t know how to return him. We did.
Today we are here to congratulate you on your ministry. Your faith doesn’t include sin but only caring, kindness, love and wisdom. This is the same message that we celebrated in the school bus.”
The couple then turned, left the chapel, got into their limousine and drove away.
I quickly went to my husband Willie who was standing nearby and asked him what he thought of the young strangers. “I didn’t see any young couple or black limousine.”
I then asked several members of my congregation who were standing close to the rear of the chapel if they saw the couple. No one did. It was like we know the sun rises every day, but we don’t talk about it.
Amen.
The Reverend Mrs. Silence DoGood
Senior Pastor
Executive Director
President
Chairman
Choir Master (part-time)
The First Church of God’s Love
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