I KNOW IT DOESN'T MATTER BUT . . .

We’ve all heard it a thousand times so let’s all say it together: “The Church/parish is not a building, it’s the people.”  Yeah, yeah, I got it and intellectually believe it.  But you know what?  At night I still dream about my home parish.  Not the new building but the one in which I grew up in on Hopican Avenue.  Similarly I am mightily attached to West Akron and the building IN

WHICH the parish of St. Sebastian worships.

 

This Sunday we will be celebrating as a Universal Church the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the mother Church building of Church buildings.  I will grant you that if some crazed lunatic bombed the place to smithereens (thanks spell check, I don’t know that I ever spelled that word before) the Church will still exist fully intact though perhaps a little ticked off.  But the fact that we have this celebration means we are kind of blushing, shuffling our feet, head hanging a little with a smirk on our faces saying, “Well, yeah, buildings do kinda, sorta mean something to us even though theologically we could completely do without them.”

 

One of my favorite quotes:  “God does not need cathedrals.  But we do.”

 

So I took Sebastian on a walk through my home town the other day.  I wrote about doing this a couple of summers ago.  The point of this particular walk was to see God’s Magic City Church.  This was formally Sts. Cyril and Methodius Roman Catholic Church founded primarily for the Slovak community.  It was absolutely built in the WRONG place -  a flood plain and was regularly flooded.  But the building was a little gem though the renovations after Vatican II were less than stellar.  It is (was) a tiny Romanesque building and would have made some kind of great shrine or some other use if it weren’t built where Wolf Creek enjoys overflowing its banks.

 

Anyway, on our way there we passed the former-former Sacred Heart Church which is now a non-denominational church.  This is the building in which I cut my teeth.  It is mostly in pretty good shape (though they removed the tile roof and replaced it with a shingle roof which robbed it of much of its character.)  So the congregation there must be doing relatively alright.

I just found this video that showcases the organ from my home parish that I tried to obtain but at the time the current owners did not want to sell.  Now some church in Texas will have it.  Tears at my heart . . .

 

Next we passed the old St. Mary, formally the Polish parish in town.  Never a remarkable building it now looks pretty sad.  The non-denominational congregation there could use some paint and other general maintenance to keep the place looking good.  Who knows how long it will be viable without a huge influx of cash.

 

Then there is God’s Magic City Church.  There was a fire there recently.  The area where the sacristy was is completely gutted.  There is no roof or windows left, just a brick shell.  The nave of the main church is burnt through and the cross seems to stand miraculously though precariously on the charred main beam of the roof.  I know it’s just a building but something about it make me feel incredibly sad.  It’s more than it just having been a beautiful building worth keeping around.  It is sad to see a place that roofed so much good so savagely devastated.  Like spilled milk, seeing something that represents such goodness so utterly wasted is somehow disturbing. 

 

Is the “Church” less for having lost a building?  No.  But we have lost a symbol of our mission.  A touchstone that reminds us to keep on track.  Another relic resigned to the memory of the current generation. 

 

No big deal.

 

And huge deal.

THE DAY AFTER A CIVIL HOLIDAY POST

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

And few people read this blog after a holiday so I thought I write about the latest on our organ project since the interested audiences is rather limited.

This project has been going on for quite some months and we are still five months from the dedication date.  It seems to be taking forever.  The Schantz Organ Company, the oldest organ company in the northern Americas, invited a group of about 20 St. Sebastianites down to see the progress.

 The wooden pipes below will not be part of our organ but another organ that is going through the process just ahead of ours.  If you ever wondered what the inside of a wooden pipe might look like, this is one of those very rare peeks inside.  The covering for the pipe laying on the horses next to the pipe soon to hide its interior for ever.

 According to our tour guide, post WWII era was a good one for the builders of pipe organs.  It was pretty much a given that if one were to build a church, "there would be a steeple, a cross, a Bible, and a pipe organ," reported our guide.  That being the case, the majority of work these days is repairing organs. 

If you think of it, a pipe organ is a mechanical device in constant use.  If you are in a Catholic parish such as ours, it is in use every day.  365 days 60 years is a lot of work to be done by a mechanical device.  My wind up alarm clock only lasted 7 years.  In any case, all of these organs are now being rejuvenated and ours is among those old organs receiving new life.

Below is part of the super structure of one section of our organ.  The boxes that you see are wind chests and pipes sit on top of those.  As you can see, some of the chests are pretty high yet pipes will sit yet on top of them!  Since our organ has always been behind a screen, few people realize it is about 2 and half stories high.  The rejuvenated and expanded organ will have about 1,300 exposed pipes.

This is a view from the top of the organ structure down.  That is our music director on top of a very high ladder looking up!

The holes in the wood that you see are where pipes sit.  These particular pipes will be rather small ones.  The can range from about the size of our pinkie to 16 feet.  (Can you see how small the man on the floor looks from the top of the organ?)

If you are interested in helping with this project, you can purchase a pipe by clicking here.  You will receive a certificate that indicates the pipe that you helped restore or make.  If you bring the certificate in the pipe that you purchased can be played for you!

CHECKING ON PROGRESS

It's been a long but good day.  After Mass there was a field trip out to see the progress if the organ.  Unfortunately when we got back there were several emergencies not the least of which one of our great long standing parishioners seems to have taken a turn for the worse and I needed to go out an anoint her.  That means a lot stuff and this blog put on the back burner today. 

Just the same - here are some pictures from my field trip.  Below is Mr. Dexter from the organ company and Mr. Kastelic our business manager inspecting the progress on our organ.  Below are some of our pipes that are starting their journey through the company.

The wooden pipes in front will be reinstalled at St. Sebastian.  They are being tested here before they are refurbished.  I got to play them to see what they sounded like.  That was pretty cool.

We will be having a couple of pipes make from scratch.  Here is what is cool about this picture: To the man's left are a bunch of flat pieces of metal.  This is what pipes such as the ones in the first picture start out as.  These will soon be a rank of pipes.

This is not one of ours but one part of the process that ours will be going though.  This is where the pipes are cleaned.  As you can imagine a half a century of not being washed can mean for dirty pipes. 

Here is a small sampling of some of the inner workings of our organ.  Everywhere you look there are stacks of things with cards taped to them that read, "Akron."

If you look closely you will notice that the side of these boards read, "Canton."  That is because they belong to the original Schantz organ that was in Trinity Lutheran in Canton, Ohio (now closed.)  Now that they are being incorporated into the new organ at St. Sebastian, "Akron" is now stamped next to the "Canton" Stamps of 50 years ago.

This is our counsel completely gutted and getting ready to be rebuilt.

On the wall of the shop are drawings of our organ.

If you find this the least bit interesting there will be a trip for donors and would-donors (and very interested others) at the end of June.  Keep an eye out.