Trinity pastor brings back midnight Mass
Pine Bluff has a way of tugging people back into its orbit. Perhaps all towns that someone considers “home” do that, but anecdotally, at least, stories are many of the person who traveled far and wide only to wind back up here.
One can ask why that is. It’s likely not the external factors, such as hip places to eat or shop. But the lack of those things doesn’t seem to figure into choices people make to move back.
A story in Friday’s paper about Jess Reeves brought that point home. Reeves is the pastor at Trinity Episcopal Church. He grew up going to that church but left in 1984, thinking then that his exit velocity was such that the gravitational pull of Pine Bluff would not be sufficient to bring him back. He was wrong.
It probably didn’t hurt that he had at one time worked in Pittsburgh, where everything was gray touched with more gray, something he said that “looks like hell.” (We imagine pastors reach for the h word sparingly so the negative emphasis he gives that town must be well-deserved.) The seed may have been planted then that Pine Bluff at least was lush and green.
Reeves had been on the collective mind of the church for a while. Tom Palmer, chair of the search committee, had reached out to Reeves on more than one occasion, but when the calls were made, Reeves was not available. And then he was.
Reeves has been at work for a year at a church that has had its struggles. A charter school that had occupied what had been the church’s own school years ago left and the rent it paid disappeared. And then there were two notable parishioners who died.
But there have also been sunny day moments at the church with others stepping up with contributions to keep the church fixed up and going. Reeves, for one, is focusing on ministering to shut-ins, which make up more than a few of the church’s membership.
There’s also the Christmas Eve midnight Mass he is reinstituting. Far be it from us to shove religion on anyone, but there is something almost magical about standing or sitting or kneeling in an old church that’s lit brightly and decked out in Christmas finery on a dark winter night, a choir or congregants singing as the clock ticks down to midnight and the joy of experiencing the first second of Christmas Day. One can enjoy such an experience on any level and that level is of course up to the individual. But living through such a moment is something that is long remembered.
The Christmas service at Trinity starts at 10:30 p.m. tonight if you are of a mind. To that end, we wish you a very merry Christmas with high hopes for the soon-to-be-here new year.
Editor’s note: The story of Reeves’ return to Trinity was written by Eva Marie Pearson, longtime lifestyle editor at The Commercial.The piece ran on Friday for those wanting more information.