You are Invited to Bob's Ordination

With joy and thanksgiving, we are pleased to invite you to the ordination of Bob.

And the insubordination of Bob's wife. No, just kidding.

For real:

Bob Speirs' Ordination for Word and Sacrament Ministry
1:00 p.m.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Trinity Lutheran Church
Brooklyn, New York

Hosting: The Rev. Samuel Cruz
Presiding Liturgy: The Rev. Harry Mueller
Presiding Communion: The Rev. Rachel Thorson Mithelman
Preaching: The Rev. Bob Nervig

Offering will go to the Trinity Seminarian Fund and to Lutheran World Relief.

Please come! Let us know if you are out of towners and need some NYC visiting advise. One idea is to check out the Seafarers International Center in Manhattan for lodging. Trinity is about a 30 minute subway ride from midtown Manhattan. Or a $30-40 taxi ride. Or we'll figure out a way to help visitors get to Brooklyn, from Manhattan. Quite honestly, there are not a whole lot of lodging options in Brooklyn proper. Most of the tourists tend to stay in Manhattan, so that's where they put the hotels.

In thinking about the ordination at Trinity, I got all nostalgic about Sunset Park which is the name of the Brooklyn neighborhood where Trinity is situated and where all the Speirs grew up. Where Bob and I spent our "honeymoon years." Sigh.

The twins, Mom Speirs, Carol, Ragaey, and assorted visitors still call Sunset Park home. Here's a picture I found thanks to google. An artistic rendering of the park itself, for which the neighborhood is named. You can see in the background the Manhattan skyline, which is much more pronounced when you're really there. In earlier days, when the twin towers were still up, you could reach out and touch them from Sunset Park.

The neighborhood consists of pockets of people who keep tight to their ethnic identities, Hasidic Jews, Chinese, Latino, Norwegian, Palestinian. It's like you cross national borders just by walking several blocks this way or that; hair, dress, food, chat, blaring music and all. A lot of people in Sunset Park have totally westernized and blended as regular 'ol Americans as well. It's a cool little place that does not get many tourists, if any; most artists, actors, interns, non-profit staff, or any kind of short term workers in Manhattan do not rent here. It has a very authentic flavor as people who live here, always have and always will live here. Somehow the cacophony of it all translates into the feeling of a safe and warm nesting grounds.

For those of you who might be reading this who live in Brooklyn, who go to Trinity, pardon me if I have not represented Sunset Park in the way you see it. It's just my perspective. Bob's brother, Richie, who is a 20-year NYPD veteran does not have such a romantic view of Sunset Park as I do. But I lived there for six years and I still like it.

We hope you can come to the ordination!

With love, T