0:08

Hey there, Diocese of the Rio Grande. I want you to meet Mary Ann Hill, who is the new rector of Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church here in Los Alamos.

0:17

Mary Ann, welcome to the Diocese of the Rio Grande.

0:19

Thank you. So we're here on Eclipse Day.

0:23

Los Alamos is a great place to be for the eclipse, and we'll have some video about that we'll share a little bit later.

0:29

But Marianne, tell us about you. You come to us from Oklahoma.

0:32

Did you grow up in Oklahoma? No, I grew up in in outside of St.

0:36

Louis, but on the Illinois side of the river. Yeah.

0:40

And what was life like for you growing up? Did you know that you were called to the priesthood? When did that happen? Well, ironically, it, I know exactly what happened when I was five years old, we were going to, my mother's from Germany and we were going to be flying to Germany.

0:54

The next day and we left on Good Friday.

0:58

So I know what happened. It was Monday, Thursday.

1:00

My dad was tucking me in and Making bunny shadows on the wall because it was almost Easter and I just got this Idea in my head that I was gonna work for God when I grew up Yeah, and and I always loved church, you know when we'd be in Germany when I was a little kid I always wanted to go in churches way more than castles and stuff like that.

1:20

So yeah, and so it formulated itself as I'm going to work for God.

1:26

Well, I, I kept a little Gideon's Bible in my desk, like in the fourth grade.

1:31

And I would do like weddings for classmates and, or we'd be pretending like we were pioneers crossing the prairie.

1:37

And I do funerals for people that were killed by rattlesnakes and stuff.

1:40

So somebody lay on the ground and I like pretend to do a funeral for him.

1:44

I used to do funerals for Star Wars figures. I've talked to, it's a common thing.

1:50

I've talked to a lot of clergy and a lot of us kind of like, would pretend to marry people or preach or bury or do funerals.

1:57

So yeah, it was in you. It was in you.

2:00

From the beginning. Now, did you grow up in the Episcopal church? No, my mother's was Roman Catholic, but when we when I was seven, we my we basically we converted because my grandfather was a very staunch Methodist and wanted her to join the rest of the family.

2:18

So we did that. And, you know, it's a good combination of Methodist.

2:21

I found the Episcopal church Right out of college.

2:25

Okay. Yeah. And where did you go to college? I went to the University of Illinois.

2:28

I majored in modern German studies.

2:31

Which is actually pretty helpful here, because I actually used my German just the other day talking to a experimental astrophysicist who's from Frankfurt, how about that? I know, yeah.

2:42

That's cool, that's cool. So what was finding the Episcopal Church like for you in your 20s? Well, that's also kind of a long story, but I I went with a friend and I had gone to a lot of churches and I tried to go back to the Catholic Church and it just didn't, it wasn't taking, and I had a dream that made me think I'm really not supposed to do this.

3:02

I mean, essentially I was rattling the gates of the Newman Center, which are never closed and they wouldn't open.

3:07

So I didn't. So I thought, okay, well, I'm supposed to do something else.

3:11

And so, I went with this friend and we I thought this, there was an Anglo Catholic church, altar against the wall, priest wore a zucchetto and a manipole.

3:20

And so I thought, Oh, here's another, it's like, you know, I, it's like that Catholic church.

3:25

I'm probably not. But. I was cat sitting for a friend and I read this essay in a book and this person was talking about wine as a symbol of adoption wine and communion wine or the you know as a symbol of adoption So he told a story about a flock of sheep at during lambing season and in one side of the flock.

3:45

There's a you that gives birth and the lamb dies and on the other side of the flock, there is a lamb that loses, the ewe dies.

3:54

So you have an orphan lamb and a childless ewe and she's got a broken heart and the baby's not gonna, he's gonna starve to death.

4:00

And so the shepherd should try to get them together, but she won't recognize the baby as her own.

4:06

So he takes the blood from her lamb who's died and rubs it on the, And I know theologically that's not, but at the time it was like, Oh, so when I went back to that church, it had a rood screen.

4:20

So the beam across the front and with the cross, the crucifixion scene on top of it, it said underneath it, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

4:29

When I, cause I knelt down to pray and I looked up at that and thought, this is where I'm supposed to be.

4:34

So, wow. Yeah, that's a fascinating image.

4:37

And I've never heard that story about the mother.

4:40

Might recognize the lamb that wasn't hers.

4:43

Yeah. Through the blood. Yeah. Yeah.

4:46

Fascinating. Yeah, fascinating. So it worked at the time.

4:48

Yeah. Well, so then as you came into the Episcopal Church how, what was that experience like for you? Were there other young people in the church at that time? Yeah, that was in the eighties.

4:58

Late eighties would've been 1988.

5:01

And that church was really quite large at the time probably the largest church in that diocese.

5:07

And there were a lot of young people. Interestingly, nobody spoke to me for four months except the priest.

5:14

Is that right? Well, it's the Episcopal Church. Classic Frozen Chosen stuff, right? Yeah.

5:18

We gotta work on that. I was at the Easter Vigil and this lady backed up and stepped on my foot.

5:23

At the reception afterwards, and then she had to talk to me because, you know, people are polite, right? Right, right, right.

5:28

Exactly. So she ended up being one of my confirmation sponsors after that.

5:33

Yeah, but but it made me really aware of young people and in the coming into the church and not feeling welcome.

5:41

So I would go up to people.

5:43

I was going up to people all the time saying hi, I'm Marianne.

5:46

I'm new here. Have we met? And after about five years, somebody said, Marianne, you're not new here anymore.

5:51

You've got it. So but I would just go to people and say have we met because if you say Are you new here? You might embarrass yourself But if you say have we met then they can either tell you yes, you've already met or you haven't but it's not embarrassing really Oh, that's a good one.

6:06

Yeah I got my I got the other young people and we just started Paying attention when people would come to church because it was a university town.

6:14

So and make sure that we took them out to brunch with us and stuff like that.

6:18

Yeah, because university towns are tough. Because people are always cycling through.

6:22

Both faculty, but particularly students. Yeah.

6:24

And they might come, you know, it's freshman fall and they show up.

6:28

But then they might not show up again or whatever.

6:30

So there's that need to really reach out.

6:33

Yeah. Yeah. So then when did the call, I mean the call to the priesthood was early in you already? Was it still there in your 20s? Yeah, oh yeah.

6:43

Yeah? But I was in the Diocese of Springfield, and at that time they weren't ordaining women.

6:50

And and I was warned about that.

6:52

So, I ended up being in the process for 10 years before I could go to seminary.

6:57

10 years, wow. In Springfield? Yeah.

7:00

Okay. They ordained a woman to the priesthood in 1998 for the first time.

7:04

And that's the summer I went to seminary. And and so what were you doing for those 10 years? I worked at the university of Illinois as an admissions and records officer, which is not quite as fancy as it sounds, but I would basically shepherd graduate students in the German department through from when they'd send a letter of inquiry all the way to when they deposit their.

7:23

Doctoral thesis. Yeah.

7:26

And use some of your German then I would guess. Yeah.

7:28

Yeah. Yeah. That's good work.

7:31

Yeah. Yeah. And so you were doing that, working in the Episcopal Church and then kind of in this marathon discernment process.

7:39

Well, and I was, I was a diocesan youth coordinator for four years.

7:43

And you know, you, you find a young person who likes kids and all of a sudden, boom, you're, Oh, here.

7:49

That's the first time I came to New Mexico, Bishop Holtzstrand.

7:52

At the time somebody recommended him to me and I, I just finished reading Death Comes for the Archbishop and I closed the book and I thought, Oh, that's, I really would love to see that cathedral, but I probably never will.

8:04

And that for whatever reason, my parents didn't live out here at that point.

8:08

They live in Pueblo, but they didn't at that point.

8:10

And the next day I got a letter from Bishop Holtzstrand asking me if I'd be the diocesan youth coordinator.

8:16

And by the way, there's a conference in Glorieta, New Mexico in a couple of months, if you're willing to do this.

8:23

So, yeah, I got to see that cathedral after all.

8:26

It's a beautiful one. Yeah. Yeah. And if you haven't read.

8:30

Willa Cather's death comes for the Archbishop, pick it up.

8:34

It's amazing in terms of the, both an understanding of the history, but it captures the soul of New Mexico, I think, in a really good way.

8:43

So 10 years discernment.

8:47

You did it feel like waiting. What did it feel like in your heart? Oh, it was awful It was really awful because it was I got I had My rector at the time was an alcoholic.

8:58

There were a lot of issues going on that I didn't understand and we got then We got a bishop who said he'd ordained women, but he only ever ordained two in 18 years That was Bishop Beckwith and he didn't ordain me.

9:12

I got picked up by Bishop Ed Little in Northern Indiana, which was one of the biggest blessings of my life.

9:19

He's a wonderful person, but it, I mean, I, I just had all, all kinds of really awful things that I had to contend with, but I really, I felt like God was, this is what God wanted me to do.

9:31

And I wasn't going to waver from that. And Psalm 27 sort of became my rallying.

9:36

Thing because it starts off with the Lord is my light, my salvation, whom then shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life.

9:51

Then shall I be afraid? And it ends with what if I had not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? Oh, tary and await the Lord's pleasure, be strong and he shall comfort your heart, wait patiently for the Lord.

10:03

written. I did. Wow. Yeah.

10:05

Yeah. In fact, at one point, my rector said to me that I was like the.

10:10

The woman the importunate woman, the woman that going back to the judge and pestering him.

10:16

And I looked at him and I said, and who's the unrighteous judge.

10:21

Oh, you've been a truth teller also in your life.

10:25

I mean, he actually laughed when I said that.

10:28

Cause he, he walked right into that. Yeah. Right.

10:30

He opened that door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there is something about faith, you know, sometimes I think we in popular language today.

10:40

Talk about faith almost like it's belief in a theory or something.

10:45

Yeah you know, like do you believe in Santa Claus? Do you believe in God is kind of like do you do you sort of believe in fairies or something like it's like it's like assertion of truth when obviously it's not true or something like that, but the way Psalm 27 talks about that sense of It's almost like I'm willing to keep looking for something that I deeply yearn to be out there or something like how did your faith in all that waiting interpret Psalm 27 for us in terms of how it hit you, you know? Know, well, you know, it talks about enemies and I think a lot of times when we we read, and particularly the Psalms in the historical context, there's some pretty drastic and hard things in the Psalms, but I thought of it, I didn't think of it as my enemies, as the people who opposed women's ordination.

11:42

I thought of it as just this difficulty I'm going through, but I've also told people like going through, my dad, that's, I think my dad's favorite Psalm too, and he's had cancer for 2009.

11:55

So I think that you can take that, what's the enemy thing.

11:58

And extrapolate that out to the things that you're dealing with in your life, but Any kind of opposition or struggle that you're going through.

12:06

Yeah. But there's that line you speak in my heart and say seek my face, your face, Lord, will I seek? And it's a seeking.

12:15

I mean, the faith to me is not an assertion.

12:18

It is a seeking, right? It is a willingness to go on a journey without knowing the end, but I'm gonna.

12:25

Go ahead and walk. Yeah.

12:28

I'm going to seek. I'm going to look right. And that to me is the spiritual path is not about cause I think sometimes people will say stuff like, you know, when did you accept Jesus as your Lord and savior, as if that was a moment.

12:40

And then after that, it's all done.

12:43

Right. Whereas I'm still looking, I'm still seeking, I'm still learning.

12:47

And to me, that's where the joy comes actually is in the search.

12:50

Yeah. Yeah. So then ordination happened eventually eventually and where'd you go to seminary? I went to Sewanee, which is also a big blessing and ironically Part of all this is one of the students I met that came to that church who we took out to brunch was a theoretical astrophysicist and we became Friends and spent a lot, a lot of time together and his I thought I was going to Nashota house because I was Anglo Catholic, which would have been miserable at the time.

13:21

Because again, women's ordination still not really accepted too.

13:26

Well, but and in fact I actually bought a wool cassock thinking I was going to Wisconsin and I went to Tennessee instead.

13:33

And but his mother was teaching there and he was an alumnus of the college as an undergraduate.

13:38

And yeah. That all fell into place too.

13:42

I mean, there's all these stories where things just fell into place.

13:44

And once I got there, I kept running into people that had weird connections to me.

13:51

Really strange ones. Like this one couple they, they got married in my church in Champaign.

13:56

I met him at Sewanee in Tennessee. They got married in my church in Champaign.

14:00

Their first apartment building was the. Apartment building, the astrophysicist was living in currently, and the husband was my dad's cousin's roommate in college at the University of Illinois.

14:12

Wait, they were in the same fraternity your dad's roommate's cousin.

14:16

No, my dad's cousin's roommate dad's cousin So my second cousin's wow roommate college roommate at the fraternity was this man that I met Yeah, but I kept running into all these people had these really odd connection a guy that went to my high school but then and moved to North Carolina and but It was just weird.

14:34

I kept and I'm like, okay, I guess I'm in the right place.

14:37

Yeah. Yeah, but it turned out to be great Yeah, and so then and then you went northern, Indiana.

14:43

Yes, that right? Yeah, so tell us about your ministry career and like how that's unfolded over these years Well, so I was in northern, Indiana for a while just actually 14 months.

14:53

Oh, I was there during 9 11 and that was I remember that day.

14:57

Yeah, that was really scary. I mean, you were, I just thought, stuff was going to happen in Chicago cause we're close to Chicago and it, but, Chicago.

15:05

I was serving in Chicago. Yeah. I mean, you, you see all this stuff happening in big cities and you think that's going to come here.

15:11

And then then I went out to Freeport, Illinois, which is two hours west of Chicago.

15:16

And it's a small town. It's in decline.

15:19

It was in decline then too. At one point, they had all kinds of industry.

15:23

They were called the Hartford of the Midwest, but it was in decline and people were kind of depressed and it was, it wasn't easy.

15:30

It really wasn't. Way different small town than Los Alamos.

15:33

This is very lively place where a lot of things are going on.

15:35

And yeah. But it was a good, good place for a first call.

15:39

And and then I got I got, well, I'd been praying, I was hoping to go to Germany.

15:47

And I was in, in contact with the Bishop of Episcopal Churches in Europe.

15:53

And he had appointed me to Frankfurt and Wiesbaden And I, and I thought, Oh, this would be great.

16:00

I'll combine my German. I'll get to, you know, be a priest, all this stuff.

16:03

So I went to, but I got this call about this church in Tulsa.

16:07

And so I followed kind of through the process and they brought me out there and I just felt at home with these folks right away.

16:16

It was like, they weren't strangers. So, we went through the whole.

16:20

Time together and I got home on a Friday and there was a message on my answering machine from the senior ward in Frankfurt asking if I would call and do a phone interview with them.

16:29

But I also knew that the people at St. Dunstan's were going to the, the vestry would be voting on Sunday, whether or not to call me.

16:37

So I waited till Sunday. And I got the call from St.

16:40

Dunstan's and I, I knew that was, I just felt like that was where I was supposed to go.

16:45

And the senior warden from Frankfort, I called her and she's this nice English lady and I said, ma'am I'm really sorry.

16:52

I've just accepted a call to Tulsa. And she said, Oklahoma! But it was, the diocese of Oklahoma is a great diocese.

17:02

It's not always an easy state to be in, but but it's, And it's very, very hot in the summer and not in a good way.

17:09

Humid too and, but it was, it was a good time.

17:12

14 years. We started a Spanish mission, which was the big, the big thing, which is now its own, its own.

17:19

Tell me a little bit about that. Like how, how did that get started and, and how did it grow? Well, my congregation said they wanted a multicultural ministry.

17:29

And I thought, well, we're in South Tulsa.

17:31

Cause I, you know, I would think I was in the grocery store for two weeks before I saw an African American person.

17:36

And so I thought, how are you going to have a multicultural ministry in South Tulsa? And I kept praying about it.

17:41

They all knew that we should do this. And I'm the one that was like, I don't know how we're going to do this.

17:45

And I was driving down, I was driving to church one day and there were some guys out doing landscaping work and had hats on and bandanas and stuff.

17:53

And I, all of a sudden it occurred to me.

17:57

That this was almost like apartheid. We had all these people around us working, doing stuff like putting roofs on our houses and landscaping and, and working in restaurants and hotels and stuff.

18:09

But, but we acted like they weren't even there.

18:13

I mean, yeah. And it was, and, and then I and that was the thing when I was in college, because I was in college in the 80s, so apartheid was the big thing world thing that we were concerned about.

18:24

So, then I started thinking, well, wait a minute, we've got Spanish speakers in our church.

18:28

And when I started counting them up, we had about 20 people already.

18:32

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And this one woman had been coming.

18:35

She was a doctor from Mexico City who'd married a former classmate in Tulsa.

18:40

She really didn't speak English, but she came all the time.

18:43

And To all the Holy Week services and things.

18:47

And what I found out was she had been divorced.

18:50

Her husband had been divorced. They couldn't go to the Catholic church, but she had very faithfully gone to the Catholic church the whole time up until she got remarried.

18:59

Her grandfather was an Episcopalian from Pennsylvania who moved to Mexico city.

19:05

She still had his prayer book and him a little bitty 1892 prayer book and stuff.

19:10

So she saw our church and realized that we were a connection.

19:15

And so, we we planned and everything and, you know, it's one of those, if you build it, they will come.

19:20

So the first Sunday we ended up with 35 people.

19:23

Wow, that's a great start. Well, and after a year we had 60.

19:28

And regularly had 60 on a Sunday.

19:30

And then And what time of day did you do this? It was at one o'clock in the afternoon.

19:34

Okay. Yeah. One o'clock in the afternoon.

19:36

Not, not the greatest time, but we had two English speaking services in the morning.

19:41

And we've talked about if we could shuffle things around and maybe make it a little bit later, but, but they still came and we would have these long lunches afterwards, long, long lunches because, and it was great.

19:53

And the food was, as you know, yeah, it was really great.

19:56

And the community that, that sometimes comes in those leisurely.

20:01

Time. Yes. Yeah. And I think what was great about it was they weren't able to contribute to the church financially, but they brought this level of vitality that was life energy and kids kids.

20:15

Yeah. Yeah. And we. The best one times we, I think we had were there a couple of years when we did a bicultural Thanksgiving and so we'd have pozole and then we'd also have turkey and it was, well, I suppose you could have turkey pozole, but we, people, I just told people, bring a dish from your culture.

20:33

I like that. Yeah. And so, you know, that was in the, everybody would sit, you know, mingle together and stuff like that.

20:40

And and we'd mix up tradition.

20:42

So we do the hanging of the greens and then have a pinata afterwards.

20:46

And, you know, it was really fun.

20:49

Yeah. And so you serve that church for 14 years? Yeah.

20:52

Is that right? Yeah. Wow. It's a little bit too long, but because of COVID, I didn't want to leave them in the middle of.

20:57

Yeah. Yeah. And how was COVID for you and for them? Like, what, how did you navigate through all that? Oh, you know how hard it was.

21:04

Yeah. The worst thing was that our organist choir director was actually Christian scientists and he had never been to a doctor in his life.

21:12

He was 63 and was a marathon runner, but we figured out he had had COVID.

21:19

That must have weakened his heart. And a couple months later, he, he had a heart attack while I was running and his wife found him.

21:28

I couldn't go to the hospital because at this point it's June.

21:31

Yeah. June, 2020 wouldn't let me, they wouldn't let me in.

21:34

And he died in the hospital after about five days.

21:37

So that was devastating. That's heartbreaking for the whole community.

21:40

Oh yeah. And then people couldn't come for a funeral.

21:43

So we had to do televised. Yeah that was really hard and he'd been with us for 10 years.

21:49

So everybody knew and the fire and the yeah, yeah.

21:54

But a lot of the things about we couldn't grieve in our normal way.

21:57

Yeah, you know, the couldn't have the funeral and the reception after and, you know, those sort of things that help the community carry the weight of loss.

22:06

Yeah. Wow.

22:10

And we learned how to do online stuff and video stuff.

22:14

How did that go in, in, at St. Dunstan? I had this great guy and he is currently the senior warden there who was at the time probably in his very early 30s.

22:25

And so we knew by Tuesday of the week, like, is that the, was that the second week of March? We knew by Tuesday that we, We're gonna have to be online and I, I called Chaz and I said, okay, what do we do? And he says, well, he said, we need to get tripods and we'll, we'll use your iPhone to, to, we can do live live streaming on Facebook and YouTube and we'll use your iPhone and my iPhone and then we'll figure it out after that.

22:55

Well, and of course, then we ended up with the camera mounted in the ceiling and the, and, and, you know, better microphones, and he had a little monitor down in front of the modesty panel in front of the first pew, and I would, every Sunday, kind of straighten my stole.

23:08

Yeah, because you could see it. But you gotta pull it the other, the other side, because it's not what, you know, sort of mirror image, but but he did great.

23:15

And, you know, it's, there, there were frustrating parts of it, because, You know, at first I felt really self conscious and and I still really don't like wearing the over the ear microphones, but but we do it because it helps people because I mean, there's some people, I had this one woman who is perfectly able bodied probably about my age who said, Oh, well, you know, it's really nice to drink coffee in your pajamas and watch church.

23:44

And I said, well, yes, but. Yeah.

23:47

You don't get, so she, they did eventually come back to church, but, but I think about the shut ins that, you know they used to say, oh, we'll, we'll watch the big downtown Methodist church in Tulsa.

23:59

They, they are on cable TV. Yeah. Yeah.

24:01

And, and now they can watch their own church.

24:03

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Initially I vividly remember people were saying, you know, the older people will be completely cut off.

24:11

And in fact, the reverse has happened. Yeah. And in a number of our churches.

24:15

We're still doing this not to reach the Facebook hordes, but because people who are not able to come.

24:22

Yeah Can and they've said to me Bishop I before it was wonderful.

24:27

Someone would bring me communion once a month, you know And I'd watch the Methodists or the Roman Catholics on cable TV or whatever.

24:35

But now, I can be at every service. I can do the Bible study.

24:39

A couple are in EFM. You know, you don't have to leave your house.

24:42

And you can, and you can be really participating.

24:46

Yeah. And and one of them told me, and they still bring me communion once a month.

24:50

But I feel like I'm, you know, I know people.

24:52

Yeah. Yeah. And then we figured out how to do community.

24:56

With like online coffee hour and stuff too.

24:59

And I was also surprised when we were starting to be able to come back in person.

25:04

There were two or three of our congregations that in that said we miss online coffee hour.

25:09

Yeah, and I thought that doesn't make any sense at all.

25:12

But they said the format is different.

25:15

Like when we were online, we would go around the Zoom room and everybody would share a prayer request and talk about how they were doing and what was happening with their family.

25:24

There were worries or concerns, we would know about that and pray for each other and, and then be eager next week to find out what was happening.

25:33

They said, once we started back in person, it was, you know, you got your cup of coffee and you went and talked to the people that you already know.

25:38

And then you went home. Yeah. Then you didn't have the emotional depth, the personal connection, strangely, that Zoom allowed.

25:46

Yeah. There are some places that still are doing a kind of.

25:50

Zoom fellowship. Yeah.

25:53

So we've learned, we've learned a lot. We've learned a lot. Well, so tell me about how you found, it sounds like right before COVID, you were starting to feel like maybe it's time for me to look for a new call.

26:04

How did you find this one? Well, Dean Kristi Malden is, was a friend of mine.

26:08

We'd been in Tulsa together for about 12 years.

26:10

And she told me, A year before I started looking in earnest because again, it was because of COVID and she said, well, let me back up.

26:21

I was a candidate for Bishop in 2021 in the Diocese of Springfield, ironically, the one that wouldn't ordain me 20 years ago.

26:30

And actually I was one of the final three and.

26:34

Got 40 percent of the vote, which I'm glad I didn't get elected because it would have been really hard, but because it's a very, very poor diocese but it, I feel like it helped move them more forward again, you know, at that point.

26:48

Well, so anyway, I, she knew that that hadn't happened.

26:50

She called and, or, and told me, she said, you really ought to take a look at Los Alamos.

26:56

And I thought, well, no, since I didn't get elected, I'm just going to stay here because we're still, you know, under COVID restrictions and stuff.

27:02

A year later, though, so this would have been like last November or December, I looked online and they were still looking here.

27:10

And so, I sent an inquiry to our search chair, Bill Godwin, and he wrote back to me, and then I, well, no, actually, no, I sent him a letter of inquiry, and I, I just thought about all of my, all the things that might have happened.

27:26

And including that I, you know, I had been this friend with this astrophysicist and stuff and he, yeah, he contacts me and he told me the letter blew them away, which is okay that's good.

27:37

And, but then we interviewed on the phone and stuff and they brought me out here.

27:41

And again, I felt really comfortable here.

27:44

But because I'd worked at the university of Illinois and I lived on the engineering campus, it's a huge engineering school.

27:50

They have the national center for supercomputing applications.

27:54

So my roommates were, I actually had a nuclear physicist roommate, but we also they were engineers and scientists and computer scientists and things.

28:02

And so I was used to that kind of nerdy.

28:06

And so in it, somebody described this town is like a college campus for grownups.

28:13

I like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, it just, everything sort of kind of clicked together in a good way.

28:20

And then my parents are only up in Pueblo, so, they're only four and a half hours away, so I can see them on an afternoon drive to go see them.

28:28

So yeah, everything that all worked out really well met, met you and but then when I got here, of course, we've had this housing problem that I've been dealing with.

28:37

Cause Los Alamos is really crunched for housing.

28:41

Yeah. There just isn't nearly as expanding in, in, in huge ways.

28:45

And it's plateaus. So where do you, where do you build, you know? But fortunately, as you know, this has just gotten resolved and I'm.

28:52

Yes, you finally can open some boxes.

28:55

Yeah. Yeah. But it, I've loved being here.

28:59

This is just, this is a great place. And I get a kick out of, out of it all the time.

29:03

Just the things that happen here. Like right now, somebody wants to rent my apartment and this is where I use the German the other day.

29:10

This experimental astrophysicist I told the appraiser for this condo I'm buying we were talking and he said, Oh, could this person rent where you're living now? And I said, well, maybe.

29:20

And so I said, good, give him my phone number.

29:22

Well, that evening he calls and he's from Frankfurt and we were, we ended up speaking German and then we're texting in German and then everything fell into place for him to find a place to stay.

29:32

But it's like, where, where else does this stuff you know? And I told you about the evening when I we're at Fuller Lodge and.

29:41

The girl comes out and starts talking to me, it was a big band concert and dance, and this girl comes out and wants to see my little Corgi, and she's from Scotland, and we start talking about Anglo Saxon history, and then her boyfriend comes out who works for the European Space Agency making spacesuits in the Shetland Islands.

30:04

I'm like, where else in the world am I going to? There's all these kind of connections happening at a big band swing concert.

30:09

Yeah. Of all things.

30:11

Yeah, so it's, it's, it's really neat.

30:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as you know, Trinity on the Hill is close to my heart.

30:16

Yeah. This is my home church. Went to Sunday school right down the hall there and confirmed and acolyte and all that kind of stuff.

30:24

And so tell me how, how are you? You've been at Trinity on the Hill now for how many months? In the beginning of May.

30:31

Beginning of May. Yeah. And so what are your first impressions of the place and the people? Well, it's very it's interesting because people are really engaged with the sermon.

30:41

So I get a lot of times after church people will come through the handshake line and say, can you tell me who that quote was from and can you give me more information about this or that or and so, which is both.

30:53

In fact, a lady told me the other day she said that.

30:57

What if we were talking about where do you find God in the service and she said in the sermon? Oh So, anyway, but it's it's neat too because there's a there's they're A bigger age group here.

31:13

We have more young adults that are new We you know new crops of young adults coming in that sounds weird a new crop of young adults comes in pretty regularly because and Um, Um, Um, Um, Went to Episcopal school.

31:32

And so he, he of course came here, there's no competition up here.

31:38

There aren't any other Episcopal churches or Anglican, you know, breakaway Anglican churches.

31:42

So this is the place. Yeah.

31:45

And one of the things I like about this is the place kind of thing is that this is when you have to have everybody together who might choose to separate themselves into different.

31:57

Little contingencies and go to various churches based on.

32:02

Here, everybody's together. Mm-Hmm. And we have to get along.

32:05

Yeah. Yeah. And, and so you have to really work out those Yeah.

32:08

Liturgical style choices and the fellowship things.

32:12

And the outreach projects. Like it's everybody.

32:14

Well, and it's not just that, it's like where people fall on the political spectrum and Right.

32:18

And theological spectrum and, but that's my wheelhouse.

32:21

I'm good. That's always been something I've been good at.

32:23

Yeah. So, so I told, in fact, I told.

32:26

Tell somebody the other day, I, you know, I always say, sometimes I feel like the old woman in the shoe that had so many children, she didn't know what to do, and I have to make sure everybody gets along.

32:35

That's, you know. That's part of what you do is nurture a community.

32:38

Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

32:41

Well, we're about it's Solar Eclipse Day. And so tell us, tell us what's about to happen.

32:47

So, the whole town, I think most of the whole town is going to be out here at the high school in the courtyard.

32:53

And there are all kinds of booths as sponsored by the library and the Los Alamos high school astronomy club.

33:00

There are all kinds of booths. Everybody's getting eclipse glasses.

33:04

If we don't already have on, they're going to have a telescope set up with filters on them.

33:09

There'll be a giant screen where you can watch the. The clips on the screen we're, it's going to be a giant geek fest.

33:15

So that's going to be fabulous. And there's some music.

33:18

Yes. The Hill Stompers. The Hill Stompers is an adult marching band.

33:22

Or, you know, it's sort of people who played instruments in high school or college.

33:26

And they're great. They're really great.

33:29

Everybody loves it. They start playing Sweet Caroline and everybody.

33:33

Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. All right.

33:36

Well, I'm looking forward to it. It's great to have you here.

33:39

Thank you. And looking after Trinity on the Hill.

33:42

And we'll bring you some video from the party that's about to happen.

33:45

Yep. Great. Alright.

33:47

Good. Good job. Now is when I check to make sure the audio worked.