OFF TOPIC: Sunday’s 11:15 mass at my parish church, Trinity Wall Street in Manhattan, will be unusual. Today, Theodicy Jazz Collective will join Renée Louprette and the Trinity Choir in presenting the Canterbury Jazz Mass. Theodicy is a group of musicians who regularly lead the music at St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church in New Haven, Connecticut. During Lent, the ensemble will lead a series of stories and jazz meditations called “Blessed are the Peacemakers," every Sunday, 4:30pm-5:30pm, at St. Paul’s Chapel. The peacemakers featured are Mahatma Gandhi, Wangari Maathai, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero, and Nelson Mandela.
St. Paul’s Chapel, just a few blocks up Broadway, is part of Trinity Church. It is most famously known as the miracle church, the church that didn’t collapse as the Twin Towers collapsed all about it on 9/11, the church where firemen and rescuers slept and ate and mended their spirits in the pews day after day for weeks.
Trinity – everyone who ever goes to the movies has seen pictures of my parish church at the top of Wall Street – on most Sundays is very traditional Anglican-Episcopalian; a bit on the high side with high mass every Sunday, clouds of incense smoke, lots of chanting and glorious classical music. A Jazz Mass will be fun; Tuesday is Mardi Gras, after all.
