Dear Trinity Church and friends,
Grace and Peace and Eastertide greetings! Readying for Pentecost this Sunday, I hope this message finds you and yours well.
As June arrives and the weather warms, we at Trinity will mark the shift from the Easter season to the “Season After Pentecost,” a stretch of Ordinary Time that will continue through the end of our liturgical year in late fall. Making this turn, we will shift to our Summer & Holiday Schedule on Trinity Sunday, June 15, with its rhythm of 9 am and 5 pm services continuing through Labor Day weekend and Sunday, August 31. Following our first 9 am service of the summer on June 15, stay with us for all-ages lawn games, brunch fare, and sunny fun.
With these changes, we will also conclude for a longer season our pattern of fifth-Sunday services of Morning Prayer. Honoring more fully the expectations of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the liturgical movements of the last century, this change fortifies for us “the Holy Eucharist as the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other feasts.” Likewise, this change will establish a welcome consistency and continuity to our Sunday worship experience, for the long-tenured and the newcomer, alike.
We also look forward to honoring Trinity’s long history with the Daily Offices and to incorporating their choral traditions into our liturgical life – as soon as this Sunday, June 8, when we will pray Evensong, in lieu of our customary 5 pm service. As you will read below in a message from our Director of Music, Colin Lynch, this special service will welcome our whole parish to share in the gifts our musical pilgrims will bring to their residencies at Canterbury Cathedral and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, this summer.
Among other worship highlights of the summer, be with us at 7 pm on Wednesday, June 11, when we will join the worldwide celebration of the LGBTQ+ community with our own celebration of a “Pride Eucharist.” Honoring the diversity and goodness of God’s creation, the liturgy will witness to the truth that LGBTQ+ people are made in God’s image. Gathering around the table as one family in Christ, we will remind one another of our shared belovedness in God. A reception will follow to celebrate the newly launched OUT@Trinity, a ministry that seeks to continue Trinity’s legacy of inclusion.
Finally, I hope you will join us for the formation and fellowship set for the months ahead. Finding joy and meaning in the lighter days and lighter fare, we will share our desert-island playlists, craft and create, puzzle and play games, and even catch a glimpse of Christmas in July! Day-by-day and in all the above, I look forward to spending much time together with you, sharing with one another our glad and generous hearts.
Summer blessings,
Morgan S. Allen
Rector
Dear Trinity,
As we turn the page on the final chapter of another Program Year, I always find renewed energy thinking about the next adventures to come. While the summer season generally brings a slower pace for our musical life, the change of rhythm creates space for new musical opportunities, planning for the new program year, and meeting the next generation of choristers.
Have you been thinking about singing with the choir? The official Trinity choir season ends on Trinity Sunday, June 15, at which time the “Summer Choir” takes up residence in the choir stalls. With no weeknight rehearsals, commitment, or audition, this is a wonderful moment to dip your toe into the shallow end of the choral pool. There are opportunities at both the 9 am and 5 pm services, with a rehearsal immediately preceding. Some choral experience and ability to read music are helpful assets but are not required. Simply email me (clynch@trinitychurchboston.org) so we know to expect you and can provide further information.
Stay tuned for ways you can follow the choir’s pilgrimage to England this summer! More than 80 parishioners have been preparing for this triennial endeavor, when the Trinity choir will sing for daily services (twelve Choral Evensongs and two services of Holy Eucharist) at Canterbury Cathedral (July 28-August 3) and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (August 4-10). These pilgrimages are moments when we explore our Anglican heritage, sing music in the spaces for which they were written, and carry on a centuries-old tradition of daily Evensong. As Morgan notes above, we look forward to sharing these devotions with you during a special Evensong this Sunday, June 8, at 5 pm.
As I asked the choir recently, what if our pilgrimage is also a mission trip? The Trinity chancel houses one of the largest church choirs in the Anglican Communion each Sunday morning. We comprise singers ages 8-80+ representing many kinds of diversity, and we enjoy singing an unusually broad range of choral repertoire. We are very blessed to call the Anglican musical tradition our own, but we at Trinity do things quite differently from the typical English cathedral choir. Taken from an anthem by Jake Runestad, sung on Maundy Thursday, “let our love be heard.”
Soon after our return is the beginning of the 25-26 program year, bringing a fresh playlist to Copley Square: a new Requiem Mass for All Souls’ Day with orchestra, Bach’s Magnificat, a concert in collaboration with The Museum of Science of the film score from the movie “Interstellar” by Hans Zimmer, and much more.
Whether your summer playlist is Bach or yacht rock, may your months ahead be full of musical refreshment!
Best,
Colin Lynch
Director of Music