Bookshop

St. Matthew’s Bookshop, a delightful place to congregate before and after services, offers a wide variety of books and gifts to enrich, encourage, and inform our faith. Eva Chambers, Lissa Qualls, Sophie Fosmire, Maggie Overbeck, Vance Cashwell assist Paula Nightengale in running the Bookshop. (See news below.)

St. Matthew’s Bookshop News – November, 2009 Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow is our “motto” as it were.  You can find those four words embedded in the new logo for St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church on our website and in the new “Why Do They…” series being featured on the Friday Devotion Page of the Enid News and Eagle.  One of the most exciting things about being Episcopalian is that we live three dimensionally: symbolically as well as physically and spiritually.  Everything we do in worship has meaning and purpose and a connection with the ancient faith.  No Episcopalian need show up for church on any Sunday and say, “I wonder what’s going on today?” The surprises and delights of our worship are not found in a new stage display or a new video gimmick, but they are there, like a motto in a logo, embedded in the flow of the liturgy: readings that are interconnected, songs that amplify the readings, and a homily that brings everything together, causing us to think about our faith.  Then, of course, we culminate our worship with the Traditional Eucharistic Feast.  Thanksgiving, a wonderful tradition in America, is also a wonderful illustration of Episcopal worship. We aren’t disappointed when we show up to Thanksgiving dinner, perhaps at the same place we have been having Thanksgiving for many years, and find the same old turkey and dressing.  In fact, we would be disappointed if we didn’t. We don’t get upset if there is a new version of pumpkin dessert or a special apple-raisin slaw we haven’t tried, but don’t mess with the turkey. Our traditions are comfortable to us. And this is a comfortable time of year, the end of the Christian Calendar, the termination of Ordinary Days.  Surprises, well-known to us and anticipated anew for centuries, are on the horizon.  Let’s not hurry so much to get there.  Let’s find ways to savor the journey.   Perhaps with a book!  Now is a good time to purchase a new daily devotional, a book on Church history, or Episcopal Haiku: The Church, Its Ways, and Its People, Seventeen Syllables at a Time.  You might also want to peruse a copy of Worship Without Words: The Signs and Symbols of Our Faith, an informative, easy-to-read explanation of the myriad symbols of Episcopal Worship.   Join us at St. Matthew’s Bookshop, a comfortable place to find something new!  Paula Nightengale

 

 

 

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