Tonight we celebrated Darwin Day at St. John's:
Why Darwin Day? Well, Darwin was born 200 years ago yesterday, and Darwin was an Episcopalian. That's all the reason we need to party. Okay, so maybe he was an Anglican, but in America Anglicans are called Episcopalians. (So far, at least.)
Why today and not yesterday, his actual birthday? Maybe you can party on a work night!
A band called Overman played for about an hour, and they were very good! I hadn't heard of them before this week, but we were lucky to have them. They sang a song about evolution which I couldn't understand the words to (the acoustics of church basements being what they are, and my hearing being what it is), but which is supposed to be very popular on iTunes; viz., it has actually made them some money.
They did a song about Mother Theresa which I did understand, and which was fine, fine, fine. You will recall that after her death, and after beatification activities had begun, it was revealed that Mother Theresa had actually been struggling with her faith for most of her adult life. The songwriter said that made him like her even more. Me, too.
And there was food! They called it "Primordial Soup," but I cut through the kitchen and saw a lot of Progresso Soup cans in the garbage. Draw your own conclusions. Actually, we should be thankful it wasn't really primordial soup. Here's Tim dishing out some hopefully faux Primordial Soup:
And there was dancing! Overman played a great blues number that would not allow feet to remain in place on the floor.
The person in the blue jeans with the clerical collar is our rector, Kara. The guy leaning against the pole is her husband, John. Give some people a little Primordial Soup, and they lose all inhibitions. (Not John, though.)
Anyway, festivities were finished off with a birthday cake, after which everybody sat down for a showing of Jurassic Park.
Yeah, you heard right, a birthday cake.
And, as is appropriate for any event held at St. John's, BBC radio was there!
You can hear their report here. The St. John's Church part is at the very beginning (singing Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin), and beginning at about the 15 minute mark. You can slide the slider to that point, if you don't want to hear the whole 30-minute show.
Addendum: I would like to point out that, contrary to what the BBC reporter said, St. John's is not in a suburb of Chicago. We are in Chicago.
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