I’ve been delving into Grace’s history in the last week or so. There were two ostensible reasons for this. One was that I read The Deacon, by Robert Gard, who taught theatre at the University of Wisconsin and was a Deacon at Grace Church for many years. Written in 1979, at a time of incredible change in society and the church, The Deacon is a novel about a plan to sell the land on which Grace stands and build a more modern facility in the suburbs. Gard has a fascinating voice, for while he is deeply elegaic about Grace’s magnificent building and history, he is also well aware that cultural and religious change has a profound effect, good and ill, on people and institutions. For example there’s a chapter in which he discusses the ordination of women, and offer measured criticism of it while recognizing the gifts that women bring to the priesthood.

We’ve also been doing some historical research into the cookbooks of Grace. 2009 marks the 125th anniversary of the publication of The Capital City Cookbook, published by the women’s guild and the first cookbook published in Wisconsin. We’ll be having a celebratory coffee hour on November 1 to honor that anniversary, the women who over the years have published other cookbooks, and have offered extravagant hospitality to Grace and to the community.