Our Parish Neighborhood: A Year Old and Growing
by Carolyn M. Gretzinger

It is hard to believe that over a year has passed since our first Neighborhood B gathering in Advent 1997. On that night, 39 neighbors-many of whom did not know each other beforehand-came together to exchange ideas on neighborhood needs and potential activities. By the time we left, each had new friends and felt renewed in our mission of bringing the church into the local community.

Over these last 12 months, your energetic interest and participation has enabled us to make great progress in translating that vision into reality. Our efforts have focused on hospitality, outreach, meditation/prayer/ liturgy, and education-the H-O-M-E initiatives set forth in the St. Charles Parish Neighborhoods' Mission Statement.

Fostering a sense of community and hospitality is particularly important in our neighborhood where many of our residents work full-time and may only reside in the region for the short term. To this end, our Neighborhood "Bees"-a dedicated cadre of volunteers-welcomed approximately 100 new households to our area over the last year through phone calls, visits, and special letters. The creation of our Neighborhood B brochure and "Welcome Packet"-spearheaded by Pam Michalegko-further strengthened this hospitality effort by presenting key information and contact persons for our neighborhood activities and services.

Another vital community building tool developed over the last year is our neighborhood newsletter, The News Bee. Under the careful eye of editor Christine Schaefer (527-6194), the newsletter has expanded from two pages to four, and each issue is formatted for the parish Web site by neighborhood volunteer Tammi McKinley Fraas. Resident profiles and testimonials about parish and community involvement are regular features, helping us to get to know one another better and further binding our diverse community.

Perhaps the most transparent examples of our hospitality efforts over the last year were our major Neighborhood B events: the Lenten Home Mass and Food Drive (3/98); the picnic and celebration of Fr. Creedon's 30th anniversary in the priesthood (6/98); and the "Christmas Around the World" Home Mass, outreach project and surprise 89th birthday party for Neighborhood B resident, Mary McLaren (12/98). Besides enthusiastic participation (40-60 people attended each activity), these events were marked by your generous outreach to less fortunate Arlingtonians. Through the Lent and Advent drives, Neighborhood B donated two cartons, 11 bags of food, and 32 shoeboxes of toiletries to Arlington's Winter Shelter!

These successful drives are just two of the many striking achievements in the area of outreach. Led by the indefatigable Mark Pando, the Neighborhood B Outreach Team has organized and participated in several national and local projects (see Mark's article on page 3). Among these: We designed and sold T-shirts emblazoned with our Neighborhood B logo to raise money to cover Catholic school tuition and other costs for a student, Tanosky Lamarre, from our sister parish in Cavaillon, Haiti. Juliet Teodosio is the #1 Sales Bee, having sold nine T-shirts. To date, our "T's for Tuition" campaign has grossed $540 (54 T-shirts sold). On behalf of Neighborhood B, Pam Michalegko is corresponding with Tanosky, who reports in a recent letter that she "stud[ies] very hard this year so that [she] can make progress."

Meditation/Prayer/Liturgy

We also endeavored to enhance our spiritual life through the formation of a neighborhood Guided Meditation Group and a Prayer Network. Kathy Rafferty, St. Charles' RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) coordinator, leads a group of six in meditation on Scripture passages (see article by Christine Schaefer for details). Recently, we launched our Neighborhood B Prayer Network, too. Each week, a list of parishioners requesting prayers is forwarded to the prayer network volunteers, who pray for these intentions in their homes. Mary Kalfatovic oversees this grace-filled project.

In the area of education, Neighborhood B has a thriving monthly book club and an active tutoring services program. Lively and provocative discussions on books such as Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory characterize the monthly gatherings.

A list of Neighborhood B residents willing to tutor students in the area was compiled and circulated to the parents of St. Charles School students, and is posted in the rectory. Marcia Basler (e-mail: rivamd@aol.com), a professional teacher, coordinates this program; current tutors include Julia Gage and Susan Brown.

Our major objective in 1999 is to increase the number of volunteers/participants in our programs. I encourage you to prayerfully consider how you might become involved. No amount of time is too small. And if you have an idea for a program that we do not yet offer, please give me a call at 243-5653. Upcoming initiatives include a reception for new Neighborhood B parishioners and the formation of a neighborhood Gathering group. We also hope to field a team of Neighborhood B residents to participate in a Habitat for Humanity project on a Saturday in June (call Mark Pando at 525-3642 for more details).

I am most grateful for the privilege to serve as your parish council representative. Let us continue to pray for one another as we seek to live out the mission of Christ in our families, neighborhood, parish, and community.

Fifty-eight of you attended the Neighborhood B "Christmas Around the World Party" in December!

Among the highlights: a line of the Lord's Prayer was shared in nine different languages (English, Gaelic, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog, and Bahasa Indonesian); we celebrated Mary McLaren's 89th birthday; and neighbors provided rides for senior "Bee" Maria Massey and several residents of the Arlington Manor Home so they could attend.

by Pam Michalegko 

The Outreach Team has become acquainted with a number of interesting veteran parishioners through our regular visits to the homebound. Among them is Annabelle Ryan.

Annabelle was born in Minnetonka Falls, Minnesota-just outside of Minneapolis-on November 18, 1910. She lived on a farm in Minnetonka Falls until she was eight years old. Then her family, including three brothers, moved to Minneapolis, where she attended a Catholic school. After graduation, Annabelle held a variety of jobs, including a ten-year stint at Minneapolis Honeywell. During the war, she was a supervisor in the packing and shipping department. She enjoyed the work-even though she recalls that the "older" men in the plant did not enjoy working with or for a woman-but the job ended after the war.

Annabelle was engaged to a member of the Minnesota legislature. Unfortunately, he passed away. At that difficult period in her life, she decided to take some time away from Minneapolis. A close family friend, who was the secretary to a congressman from Minnesota, asked her to join his family in Washington, D.C. She vividly recalls the day she left because it was 41 degrees below zero!

Once in Washington, she decided that she would like to stay even after the family she was with returned to Minnesota. She worked for some time at Garfinkel's Department Store as a sales clerk. The store housed Antoine's Beauty Salon, and when someone from the salon asked her if she would be interested in a job there, she took it.

Annabelle's work at the salon included doing make-overs and selling cosmetics, and gave her the opportunity to travel, including participating in a competitive hairstyle show in New York City. One of the stylists at Antoine's asked Annabelle to be his model, and he practiced for weeks on her to get "just the right look." For the gala event, Annabelle purchased an evening gown from the sale rack at Jean Pateu Boutique on Connecticut Avenue, and added a special touch by hand beading the peplum. She had to walk down a runway to model the stylist's creation, and the event was aired on TV. It all paid off when the stylist came in second place. Annabelle also went to Paris for another hair show. Although she wasn't a model in that event, she appreciated the opportunity to travel there.

Annabelle next served as a cosmetic representative at Warner Lambert Pharmaceutical Company. She worked with commercial accounts, including the former retail giant People's Drug, buying Dubarry cosmetics. She recalls going to New York for training and to Ohio to give how-to demonstrations to counter personnel who would be selling the products.

In 1960, after working for Warner Lambert for a number of years, Annabelle's career ended tragically. She was disabled by an accident in which she incurred severe burns. She was in the hospital six months, and after leaving, still needed rehabilitation therapy because she was not able to walk without assistance. Through the kindness of friends and acquaintances, she always managed to have a home. In the early 1980s, after the death of a friend with whom she was staying, a county representative helped her locate to Colonial Village. She has lived there ever since.

Annabelle used to attend Mass at St. Ann's parish in Arlington with a friend who drove her to church. For a while, they attended the Saturday Mass at St. Charles and enjoyed a Chinese dinner afterwards. When it became too difficult for Annabelle to attend Mass, she began receiving visits through St. Charles' First Friday program for homebound parishioners. She says she'll always hold a special place in her heart for Father Tuck Grinnell, who was the first St. Charles pastor to visit her and helped her a lot with transportation problems. She now appreciates Friday visits with Father Creedon.

Annabelle loves animals, especially dogs. Her favorite visitor from Neighborhood B just might be "Lucy," the golden retriever who accompanies owner Mark Stoffel, a St. Charles Eucharistic Minister, each time he delivers Communion to Annabelle.

When asked what she thinks of Neighborhood B's outreach initiative, her first words were "sent from heaven." She says that it has created a more personal connection to the church-that St. Charles is not just a building now, but feels like a family to her.

The Neighborhood "B" Outreach Team practiced what it preaches in the last quarter of 1998. In addition to providing rides for our homebound parishioners to and from St. Charles and grocery stores and making home visits, we were involved in a slew of other activities.

In October, several of us participated in Arlington's second annual Neighborhood Day by providing basic landscaping services for the church and school grounds of St. Charles. We definitely killed more than a few testy weeds that warm Autumn day! We also helped out with the St. Charles School Oktoberfest in various ways, from set-up to staffing various booths associated with the festivities.

In November, we took part in the Fannie Mae Walkathon for the Homeless in downtown D.C. Our marchers cheerfully braved the 5K course and ended up contributing over a thousand dollars to Borromeo Housing!

In December, we prepared Christmas gift bags for our homebound neighborhood parishioners and delivered them with Yuletide carols. We also participated in Christmas festivities for the residents of the Arlington Manor Home.

We look forward to building on the success of our ongoing work this year by actively seeking new volunteers for our team. We are also looking into the possibility of becoming active in local Habitat for Humanity home-improvement projects. Furthermore, as recent happenings with the Arna Valley apartment complex show, the affordable housing shortage in Arlington County is not going away. We will be monitoring related events, and are looking for a volunteer to focus on keeping us abreast of local public policy impacting affordable housing. Call me at 525-3642 if you're interested. My sincere thanks to all of you who made 1998 a terrific inaugural year for the Neighborhood B Outreach Team!

 As I headed out the door to the first meeting of Neighborhood B's Guided Meditation Group, my husband teased that I was joining a cult. But the truth is that even then, he, too, was impressed that we, as lay Catholics, were being offered the relatively unique and intriguing opportunity to experience practices of the church's rich contemplative traditions.

Members of the Guided Meditation Group owe this continuing opportunity to the generosity of our volunteer teacher and prayer guide, fellow St. Charles parishioner Kathy Rafferty, who gained her expertise in Catholic contemplative prayer through her studies at Washington Theological Union. In the group's monthly meetings over the past six months, Kathy has focused so far on introducing us to forms of prayer developed within Ignatian (Jesuit) and Carmelite religious orders.

Except for one much-admired member whose prayer life is already quite fruitful from meditating over the gospels nightly for over a decade, our group is mainly composed of young working women interested in growing closer to God-and perhaps more distant to daily stressors-through an enhanced prayer life. One might say we are like those who bind themselves to the Carmelite Rule in that we wish to "develop the contemplative tradition of [our] life in an open dialogue with God."

At our most recent meeting, we practiced the Ignatian form of meditative prayer in which we were led to imagine ourselves projected into a Gospel story, interacting one-on-one with Jesus. The reading over which we meditated that evening was Luke 13: 10-17, "The Healing of the Crippled Woman." Our objective was to reflect on things in our lives that "cripple" us in our relations with God and others, and to allow Jesus to free us of those sins and obstacles, as he healed the bent woman in the biblical passage.

What we're doing may sound like something new, but our Guided Meditation Group can look to activities of lay women in the medieval church for inspiration. In the 12th and 13th century in particular, Catholic lay women-including those of Germany and other parts of northern Europe known as "beguines," those of Italy and other parts of southern Europe known as "tertiaries," and those of Spain known as "beatas"-developed new forms of religious life within the church that involved intense commitments to prayer and charitable service. They differed from traditional monastic communities mainly in that participating women did not take vows like monks and nuns and the groups did not develop complex organizations or rules like the religious orders.

Of course, my prayer life has grown through participation in our neighborhood-based prayer group, but so has my appreciation for the splendid fullness of Catholicism's lay and religious meditative traditions. The experience has deepened my love for the church as the Mystical Body of Christ.

If you're interested in attending our next meeting, call Carolyn Gretzinger at 243-5653. (And by the way, men are welcome to join, too.)

 On my first day of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity of Northern Virginia, I found myself on the roof of a town house, hammering shingles into place. On subsequent weekends throughout the following year, I helped erect walls, cut out windows, stuff insulation, paint rooms, and came full circle by assisting a family in moving into their new home-not too bad for someone who previously only lifted a hammer to hang pictures!

The idea of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity has appealed to me since I saw groups of smiling, arm-in-arm students in college heading to some remote point on the earth during class breaks while everyone else took off for the beach. After I graduated and acquired the time and interest in volunteering, helping Habitat seemed like the ultimate blend of doing worthwhile work, learning something new, and seeing tangible results right away.

The organization, which has chapters around the country and ongoing international projects, made it easy to get involved. Volunteers merely call each week to see if they are needed. We're not expected to have construction expertise, though I've been impressed by professionals I've met from that field who use their time off to help Habitat. Site managers and other volunteers who have years of experience are always at the construction locations giving directions and overseeing results.

Low-income families who apply for a Habitat house participate in its construction as a sort of "sweat equity." With the labor and supplies donated, the family buys the house at no profit with a 20-year, no-interest loan. Habitat uses those payments to fund other houses.

If you are interested in forming a group from St. Charles to work from about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (lunch is provided), tentatively one Saturday in June, please e-mail me at lepatko@eenews.net. You can learn more by visiting Habitat's Web sites at www.habitat.org or www.hfhnv.org

If you are interested in being notified by email when the newsletter is updated on the St. Charles web site, please email Tammi L. McKinley at regansmom@hotmail.com.