A Weekend Retreat in Kewanee: Music and Meditation

6-7 January 2008

Annual Epiphany Choral Vespers
and
A Day of Theological Reflection

at St. Paul’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church

Our annual Epiphany Choral Vespers will be held this Sunday evening, 6 January 2008, at 7 p.m., featuring our Mixed Choir and an array of traditional Christmas Carols and Epiphany Hymns. Every year, St. Paul’s Evangelical- Lutheran Church of Kewanee puts on an event you might not expect to hear in a town our size, especially when you consider the small size of our choir.

The Epiphany Choral Vespers, besides being a prayer service as vespers always is, is an event of high cultural significance. This is the eleventh year the parish has held this event for the Kewanee community. Our Mixed Choir has only sixteen voices, but with the splendid acoustical setting under the Gothic arches at St. Paul’s, people have often commented that the choir sounds two or three times larger. These are quality singers as well, having sung together for many years, and hence they are able to provide those in attendance with a real musical treat. The choir is under the direction of the church’s pastor, the Reverend Dr. Burnell Eckardt, who has over twenty years of experience as a choirmaster and composer. St. Paul’s looks forward to this event every year, as a last opportunity in the year to present some lovely traditional Christmas and Epiphany carols in a setting for which those carols were written.

The evening’s music is always augmented by the parish’s wine and cheese reception in the school cafeteria, another annual tradition. There is no admission fee; a freewill offering will be taken.

On Monday the 7th, from 8:30 – 3:30, a Day of Theological Reflection is also scheduled, the ninth in the series, whose theme is

“Lo, It Was Very Good: The Christology of the Creation.”

We’ll examine the first three chapters of Genesis with an eye to finding Christ there, so that we may declare, as the disciples did, “We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

Following registration, the Monday seminar opens with Holy Mass at 9:00 a.m. A continental breakfast will be offered afterwards, as the seminar begins. Lunch is on your own. Admission is free.

To register, send me an email.