Coffee Hour after Solemn High Mass is only optional here at Christ Church. You don't have to stay for it if you don't want.  But you should consider staying, because Coffee Hour is actually pretty nice.

The good Christians who erected our present church building, back at the end of the nineteenth century, must have firmly believed that attendance at Coffee Hour was a matter best left to each individual worshiper's conscience, and inclinations. At any rate, the building seems to have been designed to keep it this way.  You can very easily just slip out after Solemn High Mass, without going anywhere near Coffee Hour. This is so easy, in fact, that longtime parishioners sometimes do it by accident.  After Mass, you shake hands with the clergy, and you see two sets of doors to choose from, one at either side of the nave. Doesn't matter which one you take:  either way, you’re out on the sidewalk, no coffee in sight. Fortunately, this is easily corrected.  If this happens to you, all you have to do is look for the gate to the garden (right in back of the church on the Elm Street side, a little farther down on Broadway).  The garden isn't so huge, and there are big glass doors to the parish house; you'll see Coffee Hour happening through those doors.  

If you’d rather not have to exit the premises, here’s what you do. At the rear of the church on the left there’s an inconspicuous little wooden door that looks like it must be a closet or something. You go through that door, and you find yourself in a grim little stairwell that you think couldn’t possibly be the way you’re supposed to go. You’ve just got to be brave about it and persevere. You go down the steps and out the door straight ahead. Then you’re in the garden, and you’re all set. Just follow the covered walkway to the parish house, and there you are.

Probably nobody around Christ Church would put Coffee Hour at the very top of their list of the things they love and cherish about coming for Solemn High Mass on Sundays. This is just not that kind of place.  Still, Coffee Hour is nice. There’s only so long you can spend milling around chatting in the rear of the church after the service, and it can be hard to know what else to do with yourself after Solemn High Mass. Also there’s coffee, and usually a decent amount of food.  With the food it’s like most things at Christ Church, in that there’s a certain amount of unexplained variation from week to week. Sometimes the food is far on the cookies-and-cakes end of the spectrum, and sometimes it’s more in the way of little canapés and so forth. There are times when it can be pretty close to a stand-up lunch, at least if you get there before the choir shows up. Either way, there's plenty of coffee, and there’s also hot water for tea.

Coffee Hour is actually a lot like that milling around and chatting that goes on in rear of the church after the service.  Apart from the fact there's coffee and stuff to eat, the main difference is the fact it is held in a space that looks about as unlike the church building as is humanly possible. Also, the clergy are back to wearing regular clothes (relatively speaking), and there’s no big line of people standing behind you when you’re talking to them.  The way you can tell you're still at Christ Church is that everyone’s happy you’re there, but you don’t have to do a lot of talking if you don’t want to. Nobody will ask you to wear a name tag, or expect you to account for your presence. People basically figure that if you’ve made it that far, you’ve got as much business being there as anyone. If they’ve never seen you before, their first thought will be that you’re probably someone who usually goes to one of the earlier services,  or maybe you’ve been faithfully attending Solemn High Mass for years, but just never felt like sticking around afterward. Maybe this seems weird if you’re used to a different kind of church experience. But actually it’s nice.     

On the other hand, once you've been to Coffee Hour for a few times, there's no good reason why you can't also offer to take a turn at providing the food. Then you get to be the one who decides what it's going to be. The person to talk to about that is Chris McDaniel. He's also the one who's been looking after the garden, so if you'd like you could talk with him about helping with that instead. Or in addition.