CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL An Episcopal Community in the Heart of Houston, Texas
DECEMBER 2015 CHRISTCHURCHCATHEDRAL.ORG
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A recipe for Advent
Beacon Day Center Operations Director Mike Puccio demonstrates new storage racks for dry and canned goods.
Renovations improve building, services at Beacon Day Center Volunteer Don Vold is at the Beacon Day Center twice a week, serving food or expediting its distribution. He particularly enjoys these duties because of the chance to greet homeless clients, look them in the eye, say their name, smile, and make them feel both welcome and worthwhile. “It’s what we’re here for,” he says. Now that recent renovations to the day center are substantially complete and the facility has reopened, service to the city’s homeless has resumed and volunteers like Vold are back at their posts. The $960,000 renovation project focused on the center’s kitchen, the laundry area, and the
shower and restroom facilities. It also added controlled access and exit points around the building, thus creating a safer environment, says operations director Mike Puccio. Funding to improve the facility came from a grant through the City of Houston. Charly Weldon, the Beacon’s executive director, says years of client use influenced several of the changes and improvements: “After eight or nine years, you find the little things you don’t think of in a new building.”
Efficiencies and upgrades The laundry facility, for example, typically handled 125 loads a day. Before the
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Help welcome guests at holiday outreach event Christmas at the Cathedral is one of the changes to the event, most notably shifting to premier annual events sponsored by the Mis- a focus on children and families. We are inviting students from the Rusk sion Outreach Council. Over the years, it has become a trea- CHRISTMAS AT THE CATHEDRAL School and their families to be sured tradition where mem- Saturday, December 12, 3–6 p.m. our guests and we are planning a Winter Wonderland bers of the Cathedral volunteer both time and funds to welcome and feed theme. The event will also begin later in the those in our community who are in need. day and is scheduled this year on Saturday, This year, we are making some exciting WONDERLAND, page 5
On special nights at my grandmother’s house, Boo would heat up the oven and mix together a bowl of mushy white meringue. The entire time she would talk to my siblings and me about how important it is to wait for the best, most blessed things in life. She would add chocoTHE VERY REV. late chips to the concocBARKLEY tion and then spoon out THOMPSON little blobs onto a cookie sheet. Once the oven was hot, she’d turn it off, place the cookie sheet inside, and leave the oven door cracked. “Now we must wait,” she’d say. And we would do so actively and expectantly, never knowing when the treat would be ready. She would tell us stories of faith, teach us in ways of virtue, and tuck us safely into our beds. Only the next morning would my grandmother open the oven and let us see what was inside. Where those mushy blobs had been were now light and airy morsels of such delicate sweetness that they melted in our mouths. Had we bought them at the store, or had she prepared them with us watching television, zombie-like, in the other room, or had she even told us in advance when they’d be ready, the experience would not have been the same. So it is for us this Advent. Christmas will come, and it will be glorious. Christ’s return will surely come, but we know not when. We risk missing the significance and the sweetness altogether if we fail to prepare for his coming. In her kitchen, my grandmother prepared with gusto. She cracked eggs; she whipped; she taught us. In Advent, what would it look like to prepare by waiting actively and expectantly for Christmas? Here are a few options we each might consider. Observe Advent by taking 50
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