STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
It was a motley crew that bandied up to the altar outside St. Thomas Episcopal Church Sunday afternoon.
A unicorn, some witches, a pirate and the Spice Girls gathered around the Revs. Jonah Kendall and Kathleen Bean as they delivered a Pirate Eucharist on Halloween.
“Arrgh! Alleluia, Christ, he be risen!” growled Kendall, dressed in pirate’s garb he’d fished out from the bowels of the costume trunks of St. Thomas Playhouse.
“Arrgh!” The Lord he be risen, indeed,” the crowd growled back in pirate lingo.
“Almight ‘n merciful God, ‘tis only by yer gift that yer faithful scallywags offer ye laudable service,” continued Bean, who was hardly recognizable in her pirate’s garb. “Ye shall love the Cap’n yer God wit’ all yer heart…We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, eternally begotten o’ the Admiral…he became incarnate from the virgin Mary and was made a swabbie. Fer arr sake he was keel-hauled by that scurvy dog, Pontius Pilate, was sent t’ Davy Jones’ locker..and on the third day he … ascended into heaven and be seated at the right hand ‘o the Admiral.”
The Pirate Eucharist originated as a fun thing to help kids realize they can have a sense of humor and be reverent at the same time,” said Bean, who first heard the pirate Eucharist in Berkeley , Calif., five years ago. “And worship is universal—even for pirates.”
Plus, Kendall said, “The Episcopal Church has English roots. When you think of pirates, you think of Merry ol’ England.”
The scallywags who turned out for worship were rewarded afterwards with Trunk or Treat, an excursion through the parking lot where treasure chests of M&Ms and Kit Kats awaited.
Spider Woman Liz Hickey didn’t have a black cat, but a black lab named Birdie poked his nose out of the spider web crisscrossing her trunk.
Smoke and fog bellowed out of the trunk of Ward Loving, who wore a chicken on his head and held a basket of eggs, creating a pun-like “hen-surrection” in a nod to the Capitol insurrection.
And Sara Pettit went for a pun, as well, sticking a calculator in her gown, across which she wore a sash proclaiming herself “Miss Calculate.”
“I love puns,” she said. “Last year I was Pumpkin Pi.”
Sara Gorby, who reprised her role of Dorothy in a past production of “The Wizard of oz,” said the church started the Trunk or Treat last year when COVID put a damper on youngsters going to Halloween parties.
“Some of us don’t get trick or treaters because of where we live so it’s fun to do this,” she said. “It’s a fun spirit and so much fun to see the different costumes.”