My scrapbook from the ordination and consecration Friday evening of the Rev. Payton Walker Høegh in the Sacred Order of Deacons. By the mysterious working of the calendar, Payton was our only ordinand this summer. Program director of The Center for Spirituality in Nature, he asked if his service could begin outside, in the Seeds of Hope garden at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park.
We processed inside to St. Athanasius Episcopal Church, Echo Park, where the Rev. John Watson is priest in charge, for the sacramental work. Payton brought along some garden dirt and used it to make the sign of the cross on his forehead and alb before prostrating himself before the altar, awaiting the the Holy Spirit’s visitation to make him a deacon, which she did, as a congregation of friends and family bore witness.
The deacon of the mass, the Rev. Joanne Leslie, Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles archdeacon emerita, revealed to Payton the mysteries of setting the table. One of his other mentors, the Rev. Canon Jaime Edwards-Acton of St. Stephen’s Hollywood, organized the wonderful music. My colleagues the Rev. Canon Thomas Quijada-Discavage and the Rev. Norma Yanira Guerra helped see to every detail. I was presider and preacher. “The church’s first deacons were table servers,” I said. “Today Payton enlists in the sacred order of table servers in the midst of our government’s wicked war on table servers.”
