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The first crepes myrtle was brought to Charleston by botanist to Louis XVI, André Michaux in 1786. Originally from China and exported to England, it did not bloom since the clammy British climate wasn’t hot enough. But the south was!

Southern Living writes “Audacious spikes of pink, purple, white, and red flowers crown its sculptural branches for months in summer. In fall, leaves turn a brilliant red or orange, and its peeling bark brings winter interest. Crepe myrtles are found in many shapes and sizes, but their arching branches make them a mainstay for framing many a courtyard. The tree loves heat and humidity, tolerates drought, and grows quickly. Unlike the azalea, camellia, and gardenia, which pine for acid soil, crepe myrtle flourishes just about everywhere. No wonder it ranks as the South’s most popular (and coveted) ornamental tree.”

St. Josemaria Institute

We celebrate James the Apostle on July 25. With his brother, John, the Gospels (Matthew 4, 21-22; Mark 1, 19-20; Luke 5, 10-11) record that they were fishermen, the sons of Zebedee, partners with Simon Peter, and called by Jesus from mending their nets beside the sea of Galilee at the beginning of his ministry

Jesus nicknamed them ‘the sons of thunder’ – perhaps justified by the story (Luke 9, 51-56) that they once wished to call down fire from heaven to destroy a village which had refused them hospitality.

They made it to key events in Jesus life – the Transfiguration, Gethsemene and at various healings and miracles – Peter’s mother-in-law and raising of Jairus’s daughter. Obviously, James was of Jesus closest followers.

He is known as James the Great to distinguish him from James the Less, or James the brother of the Lord.

About AD 42, shortly before Passover (Acts 12), James was beheaded by order of King Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great (who tried to kill the infant Jesus–Matthew 2). James was the first of the Twelve to suffer martyrdom, and the only one of the Twelve whose death is recorded in the New Testament.

Tradition is he was a missionary to Spain in his life and, at his death, was buried at Compostela, a site of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. 

Relics of the saints were believed to possess great power. Spain needed it in the 8th century. Jerusalem fell to the armies of Islam in 636 A.D., and less than a century later, in 711, Spain was also invaded and conquered. Islam rapidly reached northern Spain, and sent raiding parties into France. In northwest Spain, however, a small Christian kingdom, including Asturias and present-day Galicia, emerged in the 8th century, and at this time James’ tomb was discovered near Finisterre. James was the most senior member of the intercessionary hierarchy whose relics remained undiscovered.  The discovery of his tomb helped to bolster the resistance.

In the 12th Century Santiago came to rank with Rome and Jerusalem as one of the great destinations of medieval pilgrimage. The first cathedral was built over the site of James tomb, and Benedictine houses were established.  The cathedral where he is buried was depicted in the film, The Way, at the end of the “Way of St. James”, a pilgrim’s path across Spain.  

The relics of St James are housed in a silver casket below the high altar, above which his statue presides over the cathedral. On the feast of St James on July 25, and other high days and holy days, a giant censer, the Botafumeiro, is swung on ropes by red-coated attendants in a great arc from floor to vaults, emitting clouds of incense over delighted crowds. It’s considered a symbol of both the cathedral and the city.

Here is the scene from The Way that depicts the pilgrims reaching  Santiago and venturing to the cathedral with the swinging of the censer or incense burner.  This has never been filmed before and the production crew had to get special permission to film it. They were allowed only 1 hour!

The “Way” is actually many paths across France and Northern Spain that has been followed by pilgrims for 800 years. In recent decades it has enjoyed a resurgence as a spiritual journey with many organized and unorganized journeys.  You can the take the route across Northern Spain (800km) taking 6 weeks or break it up into shorter journeys. 

July 20 always brings back memories of the moon landing of Apollo 11. On that day in 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on the moon.

A unique book about the space program “To Touch the Face of God 1957-1975” by Kendrick Oliver, published in 2013 is about the role of religion, with the astronauts. How did religion and faith affect the astronauts during the flight and later as they tried to reflect on it? Highly recommended!

5 examples and quoting liberally from the book without quotes. It was clear that the missions affected everyone differently and some more than others. I have chosen those where there was a definite response.

1. Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 was an elder of Webster Presbyterian, where Glenn had also worshipped; he taught Sunday school at the church, as did his wife Joan. Aldrin marked his arrival on the moon by serving himself communion, “symbolizing the thought that God was revealing himself there too, as man reached out into the universe.” Finally, in a television transmission as the crew was headed back to earth, Aldrin reflected on the “symbolic aspects” of the Apollo 11 mission and quoted from Psalm 8: “When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?”

2. Standing on the porch of his lunar module during the Earth-orbital mission of Apollo 9, Russell Schweickart was unexpectedly afforded five minutes to register his position in the universe while his crewmate Dave Scott attended to a problem with his camera. “Now you’re out there,” he later re-called, “and there are no frames, there are no limits, there are no boundaries. You’re really out there, going 25,000 miles an hour, ripping through space, a vacuum

Eventually, by the end of the mission, his sense of connection had come to encompass the whole of the earth. “And somehow you recognize,” he stated, “that you’re a piece of this total life. And you’re out there on that forefront and you have to bring that back somehow. And that becomes a rather special responsibility and it tells you something about your relationship with this thing we call life. So that’s a change.”

It was to this planet, and not some starry futurity, that he now knew that he belonged, “a piece of this total life.”  Many years later he reflected about his experience. “It has in many ways given me the opportunity to initiate things, whether that was forming the Association of Space Explorers or starting the B612 Foundation, protecting the Earth. I’ve been able to do a lot of things because I flew in space that have implications for the future that weren’t part of Apollo 9 per se

3 For Frank Borman on Apollo 8, a lay reader in his Episcopal Church the voyage to the moon offered proof of man’s dependence on God: the earth was a “miracle of creation,” and everything else was “eternal cold”. While in lunar orbit, Borman also recorded a prayer to be played to his church during its Christmas Eve service, in lieu of the lay-reader duty he had been scheduled to perform.

4 Apollo 14 lunar-module pilot, Edgar Mitchell. “Now, in an “ecstasy of unity,” as he coasted between moon and earth, he rapidly arrived at an understanding of what this cosmology really meant: that everything was connected. “It occurred to me,” he wrote, “that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft itself were manufactured long ago in the furnace of one of the ancient stars that burned in the heavens about me.”

5 When James Irwin, lunar-module pilot on Apollo 15 had a problem erecting the power generator for the various scientific experiments that he and Scott were to leave on the moon, he prayed for guidance and immediately came up with a solution. The next day, he spotted a strange, light-colored rock sitting on a base of gray stone, almost, Scott recalled, ”as if it had been placed on a pedestal to be admired.” Scott wiped away some of the dust covering the rock and saw that it was composed of large, white crystals, an indication that it had once belonged to the moon’s primordial crust. “I think we found what we came for,” he told mission control. Later the rock would be dated at more than four billion years old, close to the age of the solar system itself, and given the name Genesis Rock. To Irwin, the peculiar placement of the rock—“it seemed to say, ‘here I am, take me’ ”—was evidence that its discovery had been the will of God.

[He wanted to hold a service celebrating the beauty of his surrounding but couldn’t interest his partner who reminded him of their tight schedule”]. Irwin offered up instead one of his favorite lines of scripture, from Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” He sensed, he later wrote, “the beginning of some sort of deep change taking place inside me,” from the shallow, fitful religious faith that had marked his life before the moon to a new confidence in the power and agency of God