Spaciousness

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone at all familiar with the Episcopal Church that Holy Week is the busiest week of a parish priest's year.  There are five significant services this week - and they are all unusual, once-a-year events that take more planning than usual.  This year at Grace we're having a vigil service - the first vigil that we've had here in a very long time.  The vigil is a fancy and complicated service with all kinds of extras - a bonfire, candles, incense, chanting, lots of different readers, baptisms - the bishop is even coming to celebrate the service with us this year, along with our neighboring clergy.  It is the first vigil I have planned myself and I have been overwhelmed by all the details.  I have been in a bit of a panic, to tell the truth.

Today I finally put the finishing touches on all the ends I considered to be loose around this big service in my own mind, and I feel much better.  And the calm that has come over me has been a reall gift.  Because now I feel ready to travel through Holy Week in a way that I am open to receiving - not just giving.  I don't think it's only priests that can fall into the trap of managing their work, or their lives, in such a way that you become separated from it - almost as if you're watching yourself and what you are doing instead of actually being present and participating in it.  Have you ever had that feeling in your life or work?  I have, and of all weeks, Holy Week is not the week I want to feel that way.

Because the truth is - Holy Week is not primarily the busiest week of the year.  It is the holiest week of the year.  It can be a spiritual portal into new life - if I allow God to work in me.  Why would I want to be preoccupied with what I think my work is when God wants to work through me?  All the preparations we do at a church for Holy Week are not for ourselves.  They are for God.  And God is for us.  So really - what is there to worry about?

So I am glad I was able to get enough details settled today to allow myself the peace and the space to be able to receive - to listen - to rest - to contemplate - to hope - as this week progresses.  I pray the same spaciousness for you. 

If you'd like to experience the beauty of our Holy Week liturgies, you can find the schedule here:

http://gracetrumbull.org/templates/System/details.asp?id=47651&PID=767044

Holy Week

The past week has been very, very wet. Soggy, in fact. Depressingly, endlessly rainy and chilly and damp and now our cellar has flooded and smells bad. Holy Week is not a cheerful time. And I'm feeling a physical longing for warmth on my skin - for sun in my eyes. They're predicting lovely weather for the weekend, and if they're right, Easter will truly feel like new life this year. But Holy Week is not letting Easter arrive early. The dafodils that are valiantly blooming in the rain are heavy and sodden, overburdened and stressed. They look like I feel.

While taking a walk during one of the short respites from rain, I saw this crocus trying to bloom by the side of the road. It was coming up in an overgrown area that no one tends to. It's an ugly little area, full of dirty sand and dead leaves, cigarette butts and lots of trash thrown from the windows of passing cars. It's an eyesore, to tell the truth. But there in the midst of all that ugliness this crocus was coming up. It stopped me in my tracks. In an ugly little patch of ground, something of beauty was doing its best to emerge.


On Maundy Thursday we will have a footwashing service. I love this service. Sometimes people are shy about having their feet washed. "My feet are so ugly," they say, or they worry that their feet smell bad. They react like Peter, saying, "You'll never wash my feet." But when Jesus has only one more chance to show his disciples how much he loves them that night in the upper room, he doesn't compliment them on the shine of their hair, the color of their eyes, or how well dressed they are that evening. Instead, he gets down on his knees to lovingly care for his friends' dirty, calloused and stinky feet. Jesus loved the less glamorous parts of people and also the less glamorous parts of society. He liked to break bread, not with winners, but with sinners.

Later that evening, Jesus calls his disciples to love one another as he had loved them. So, if we are to follow the way of Jesus, we must get down on our knees and honor even the ugly, embarassing and fallen parts of each other. We need to accept the ugly, embarssing and fallen parts of ourselves. And we need to believe that God loves us through and through - not just the parts we manage to make pretty. We need to believe that love is present everywhere - not just in the clean, well designed and well ordered parts of the world.

When I'm in search of God, I don't think of looking in ugly abandoned lots first. So when I saw this flower reaching skyward despite the cold rain and its ugly surroundings, I received it as a sign of God's deep love for me, even for my brokenness - even during the darkest days of Holy Week - and as a sign of God's love for all creation - just as it is.