Marcia Livingstone cannot remember a time when she was not in the Presbyterian fold. “The church has been a part of my life from a baby,” she says.
Marcia, a Torontonian born and bred, thinks back to her early childhood at York Memorial Presbyterian Church, on Keele St. The youngest of four girls, the family still tell the story of about one Christmas Eve when the older girls were in the choir and Marcia, a toddler, laid herself down on the pew and cried the entire service.
In Marcia’s girlhood, dressing up for church was still a weekly ritual: the men in suits, ties and polished shoes and ladies in Sunday best dresses. This is a life-long habit, for Marcia, who still wears a skirt, rather than pants, to church services.
After Marcia married, in York Memorial, she and her new husband moved to The Beaches. Before saying au revoir to her family church, however, Marcia asked her father for a recommendation and he suggested trying Beaches Presbyterian. That was 1980 and Marcia is still there.
Marcia pitched right in and over the years she has been on the Board of Managers, the Stewardship Committee and also headed a fundraising committee. Currently she teaches Sunday school and her son plays guitar in the church.“I’ve always been involved with children. I started teaching Sunday school when I was 14,” Marcia says. “You find some children are wise beyond their years.One Sunday the subject was an omniscient, omnipotent God. Marcia asked her group of four and five-year-olds if they knew what that meant. One little girl responded. “Kinda like pieces of a puzzle that don’t look like anything. But you put it together. That’s God.”Marcia believes the pleasure she derives, from working with the young ones, was influenced by her mother who started a nursery, at York, and her father, an elementary school principal and church elder.When Marcia’s mother died, her father bought a condominium in The Beaches and for several years, Marcia, her father and her son – three generations – attended church together. Sadly, Alan Robb died three years ago.The Beaches congregation is small, but there’s a family feeling, according to Marcia. “There’s something for everybody and, surprisingly, we are holding on to young people,” she says. “Ministers come and go, but the core congregation is always there.”
Marcia also comments, at Beaches, the members consume a lot of dinners and lunches. They also celebrate birthdays, monthly, and sell baked goods at an annual fundraiser for The Cure (breast cancer) . Marcia’s specialities tend to be lemon cranberry shortbread and chocolate spritz cookies.
Thinking back to York, Marcia recalls there were five stoves, next door, in the Youth Centre. The result was the ladies of the WMS became adept at producing roasted dinners. These church meals were typical, British-style, meat, veg and potatoes.
That was then. Now, at Beaches, Marcia’s favourite church chow-down is the annual Maundy Thursday supper, held the night before Good Friday. The simple meal consists of homemade soup, bread, cheese and dessert. The food is followed by a church service where the first stage of the Maundy ritual is enacted. The Maundy tradition commemorates the washing of Christ’s feet, by his disciples, and end s with a great flourish on Ester Sunday. (For a full description of the Easter Maundy ritual, at Beaches, click on Marlene Barnett’s Cauliflower, on the Recipes and Memories blog list.)
Currently, like everyone else at Beaches Presbyterian, Marcie is looking forward to the reading of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, Sunday, December 15. CBC Radio’s Michael Enright and singer Sarah Harmer are confirmed readers. This seasonal event is a fundraiser, for refuges, sponsored by the church.
For more information: Call 416-699-6601 or visit: www.beacheschurch.org.
CHOCOLATE SPRITZ
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 tsp vanilla
2-1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
METHOD: Melt chocolate in double boiler. Sift together flour and baking powder. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
Beat in eggs, chocolate and vanilla.
Gradually add flour and baking powder to creamed mixture, beating with each addition.
Use a cookie press or roll out ¼ inch thick and cut with cookie cutters.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 8 minutes. They should be only lightly browned on the bottom.
Option: Mocha cookies can be made by adding 2 tsp instant espresso to the flour.
