When I first wandered into Integrity/New York’s eucharist at St. Luke-in-the-Fields on Hudson St. in Manhattan, one of the first people to greet me, after Nick Dowen, the President, was Brooke Bushong. She was a Church Army evangelist who was Vice President of Integrity and a great master of ceremonies. Over the next three years, we all worked together to make Integrity’s weekly Eucharists work, and work well. Everything I know about Anglican liturgy that’s worth knowing I learned from Brooke.
After I left New York, she was ordained a Deacon of the Diocese of New York and worked at St. Clement’s Church in Hell’s Kitchen, where she assisted at liturgy and almost everything else they did. I joined St. Clement’s for the last year of my time in New York and enjoyed it tremendously, in part because of Brooke’s kindness of introducing me into the life of the parish.
A few years later she (having been a smoker for many years) was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the last time I saw her, at Pride in 2001 in New York, she assisted at the street liturgy celebrated by Bishop Catherine Roskam accompanied by her oxygen tank and nasal tubes.
Recently she had entered Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, and when I spoke with Nick Dowen in New York last week he indicated that her prognosis was grave. So it has happened.
May she rest in peace and rise in glory. And the heavenly masters-of-ceremonies had better watch out, as she’ll be after them to perform a perfect liturgy every single time.
I’m sorry.