CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL An Episcopal Community in the Heart of Houston, Texas
The glory of the unfinished creation This past May I attended the final spring concert of the Houston Chamber Choir. It was a performance of Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor, with Robert Simpson conducting and Cathedral member Kelli Shircliffe singing soprano solo. Even with my un sophisticated ear, I love Mozart. But this was the first time I’d heard the C Minor Mass. When the THE VERY REV. Credo began, I listened BARKLEY with great intent as I THOMPSON followed the English translation in the playbill. The creed continued, “True God of true God; begotten, not made” and crescendoed with “Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven…” And then it stopped. The entire movement. Cut short. Unfinished. Mozart never completed this mass. It is a half-done thing. As words read on the page, it is actually pitiful: choppy, distracted, even half-hearted. Of the mass, Mozart wrote to his father in 1783, “The score of half a mass, which is still lying here waiting to be finished, is the best proof that I really made the promise.” The “promise” in question was for a family visit to Salzburg to which Mozart had committed, but it could equally refer to the unfulfilled promise of the mass itself, a sin of that “left undone.” How like Mozart’s C Minor Mass we are. We are intended by God to be things of glory: incarnate spirits endowed with great creative power. We are placed on God’s earth full of promise, and yet so often we fail to finish the good thing God has started. We commit ourselves to God but are quickly distracted. We love halfheartedly. We flit from one thing to another in our lives at a choppy pace. Instead of pursuing God’s hopes for the
GLORY, page 3
AUGUST 2013 CHRISTCHURCHCATHEDRAL.ORG
Defining the Cathedral’s vision Last year during the search for Christ Church Cathedral’s eighth dean, the Cathe dral reaffirmed its mission statement: “The mission of Christ Church Cathedral is to pro claim the love of Jesus Christ through word and deed to the parish, the diocese and the downtown community.” Following upon that mission, the Cathedral identified six guiding principles to inform its ministry: gospel, outreach, community, lit urgy, music and tradition.
The dean’s search resulted in the Very Rev. Barkley Thompson joining the Cathedral community in February, and this fall Dean Thompson will lead a task force to help Christ Church further pursue its mission. Dean Thompson offers, “As a parish fam ily we’ll ask, ‘How do we most faithfully fol low our guiding principles? What will success look like as we strive to proclaim Christ’s love in downtown Houston?’ I’m excited about
VISIONING, page 3
The gift that kept on giving
Elma Schneider with her sister, Lynette Autrey, and brother-in-law, Herbert S. Autrey, in 1968. (Photo courtesy of the Woodson Archive, Fondren Library, Rice University.)
Elma W. Schneider is not a name many at the Cathedral would recognize today, but, even though she died decades ago, she continues to be one of the largest contributors to the Christ Church Cathedral Endowment Fund thanks to a generous allocation in her will and some shrewd management of her bequest. Although it didn’t seem to be especially impressive at the time of her passing, Schneider’s gift has now provided
the Endowment with more than $6 million. After a lifetime at the Cathedral, Schneider died in 1983, leaving the majority of her estate to be split between Rice University and the Cathedral Endowment. With family roots in the congregation dating back to at least 1846, Elma made it a priority to leave her earthly possessions to the Cathedral. Since she had no children or close relatives, and she was
ELMA’S GIFT, page 8