Kasey and Her Muse

by Ken Holloway [email protected]

I had seen Michael Beach during the Vergers' Guild Annual Conference in Nashville this year, but did not actually meet him until we were seated close-by at the airport waiting for our flights home.

He told me that he has been a member of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Sierra Madre, California for twenty-six years and that he sings in the choir most Sundays, so he is not verging as much these days. We talked a bit about our experience in the aerospace industry. During our conversation, I asked him to let me know if he had any ideas for Verger’s Voice articles. I had asked at least fifty others to send me ideas, drafts, photographs or manuscripts, mentioning it conversationally.

Michael replied. The image he sent and the story behind it moved this 70+ author.

Kasey O’Sullivan and her grandmother came to the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Sierra Madre CA. about three years ago. Kasey, then a 7 year-old, has been an acolyte for the last two years. She is acquiring liturgical wisdom in this picture from Head Verger Michael Beach. This picture was made by Dr. Jay Packer, a member of the parish. Dr. Packer is behind the camera at Ascension often. He approached Michael and Kasey’s grandmother with the concept and made this one with their approval.

We can read into this picture as we are guided by our individual reference frames.

I see teaching, guiding and loving care in a liturgical setting. How about you?

"How To" Look up VGEC Member information

Ever wonder about finding email addresses or phone numbers of fellow VGEC members?

Often, the thought process follows a pattern like this:

• I was trying to find an email address for someone just now and I confess I couldn't find where on vergers.org I could do that...
• Granted, it's late and I could be missing it, but where should I be looking?
• I figured I'd have to log in to gain access to personal information, but...
• I'm not looking under the right rock, I guess!

Here’s a “How To” explaining the Membership Management Services feature of our web site. Known as "MMS," you can get to the site by typing membership.vergers.org in your browser's address bar or you can Google membership.vergers.org and it will find it for you.

You can also go to vergers.org and click on, "Member Login" in the menu buttons towards the top-right of the page:

This takes you to the login page:

Enter your email address and password and click  "Login." If you do not know your password you can click on the link to easily reset your password.

Once you login you will be taken to the main MMS page showing all of the capability of the system.

Go to the Search page by clicking the "Search Membership" tab to the far right as shown in blue below.

Enter your search criteria as desired and click the "Search Membership" button. In this example, we entered "Holloway" as the last name. This will display these search results:

You can click on several links in the results including parish and diocese if we have links for that information available. If you click on the member name or the photo, you will see details about the member:

From here you can print the information or copy it using highlight/right click/copy (or not)! Note that you can view a map of the member home address or the parish address. Remember that this information is only available to other members of the VGEC so your data is safe within our VGEC membership community.

So there you have it!

If you have other "How To" questions, send them to [email protected]. Our "crack" volunteer staff will have a response out to you via The Verger’s Voice in a flash.