Down the road and down the tubes

Sophie and I got home from CLAW in Cleveland late last night. At nine hours it's a little too long a drive for me. Up on Friday and back on Sunday.

Now it's Monday and it's down the tubes for me, feeling really low. This is what I do, go down the tubes. Sometimes, like today, I'm pretty sure my feelings come from being tired and alone again. Sometimes the causes of my feelings are mysteries. I often chalk them up to out-of-balance brain chemistry so I don't spend any time trying to figure it out. When I feel this way I have some strategies that help (like calling people) but when I feel this way I'm less likely to be able to call. I'll just keep plugging along.

Journey to Easter

Easter Day is over -- a memory -- though Eastertide continues for 50 days. My journey through Lent and Passiontide this year is different from last and every Easter before. 

As I’ve grown I know more and feel more each year at this time. It's so true now and with many experiences to serve my faith and understanding of the enormity of the Sarifice of Easter feels much greater though only 1% of the whole thing.

My journey into Lent started slowly, a slowing of life, a time of meditation. I did it for a while until I forgot to do it. Time to time I’d slow down again and get back into it only to forget again. I do remember the first time I went into the church to set up for a service in very early Lent and I saw the cross veiled in purple, veiled to hide the true meaning of the cross. It shocked me; it used to be there and now it wasn't quite. I felt and thought that things were different. I can’t say how or why a purple veil has such an effect except to say that the veil has been intentional for centuries and it served its purpose for me this year.

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, a festive day of singing and waving palm fronds, until – once in the church – we read the Passion Story. The story includes the Last Supper, the Institution of the Eucharist, the betrayal and arrest. I got to read the words of Jesus in this Story. i came to these words as I spoke: “Take, eat, this is my Body broken for you” and “Drink this all of you: this cup is the new Covenant in my Blood.“ What a great gift to say those words aloud to a church full of people. They are almost always reserved for the priest but today they were mine. A few days later, Maundy Thursday, I read the Epistle which contained the story of the Last Supper and once again I was allowed to say those words. Each time I felt power of the Holy Spirit moving through me, into the words, and into the listening ears. It was so not about me. I was Server at the Maundy service so at the end took part in the sad stripping of the altar and washing the holy table. We finished and left in silence.

I was also allowed to be Server at the Great Vigil of Easter the ancient service where lessons and psalms from Creation to the Valley of the Dry Bones. The Jewish escape from bondage to Egypt was part of our readings and I was happy to move up to the podium (in the dark) to read the Exodus story of crossing the Red Sea.

We sat in darkness listen to scripture but not the Gospel because the Good News was not year returned. Finally, the moment came when the Priest cried out: Alleluia! Christ is Risen! The Holy Table and Altar candles are lighted from the Paschal Candle that was lighted from the fire we kindled outside. That was our cue to ring out bells and we rang them like demons. The first time for bells since the beginning of Lent.

Easter Sunday, again, the power of service, the power of seeing the Eucharist from a new place. I was the only acolyte Easter Sunday 8:00 so I got to stand at the Holy Table with Fr. Carey and Fr. Richardson. Standing at the Holy Table. Unbelievable, yet it did happen.

Thrice I was Eucharistic Minister, carrying the Chalice to those receiving communion. Carrying the cup from person to person, saying, “The Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation.” Carrying it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sunday evening I took the bread with the words, "The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven." It's a great gift to be allowed to interact with people this way.

Thrice I stood, moved to the lectern to read the Epistle lesson each time concluding with, The Word of the Lord.

I helped set up and serve at a luncheon for our Bishop and priests from the area who come to renew their vows each Maundy Thursday. I helped set up for the reception after the Easter Vigil. I filled candles with liquid paraffin, washed silver, and put bread and wine out for the Eucharistic meal on Easter Sunday.

I say all this not to boast of how good I am. It’s for me so I remember, so I might share feelings and emotions from service and worship.

During the Great Vigil of Easter I had to close my eyes again and again to prevent a flood of tears. Often I was moved to that place of overwhelm, that place of too much love, too much redemption. From my Server seat I looked out at the congregation with their candles, the tapers in hurricane globes on the pews, the Pascal candle lit from the fire we kindled outside. I saw the soft pink light that came through the windows as sunset came and went. All was beauty, all was love, all was redemption. I knew there were flowers all around me but I couldn’t see them in the dark. We read and sang until the moment the Priest cried out, “Alleluia. Christ is risen.” We all rang our bells like demons while the candles on the Holy Table and High Altar were lit from the Pascal Candle flame and the lights came on full. Momentarily, as we continued our joyful ringing, the full-voiced organ introduced our opening hymn, Jesus Christ is risen today!

The returned light of Christ, the flowers, the joy, the redemption, the music, the bells all filled me and I overflowed. My love of God and my joy in my redemption were palpable.

I went back to Paris today, more than once. Today’s Gospel reading spoke of an Angel sitting on the stone which had been rolled away from the tomb. “His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow,” Matthew wrote. I remembered Paris, my own vision of light. I remembered, “See Me through the Eucharist.” Much of what I had seen and done in these last days was recast into a brighter light and deeper service.

I felt so much love these last days and so well loved. At 1:00 Sunday afternoon – 5½ hours after I arrived – I didn’t know what to do. I realized I was wandering around not really wanting to go home but having no service to attend.

The services of Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday were often too much for me. What’s heaven going to be like?

The Great Vigil of Easter

From the website of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City


April 19

7 PM The Great Vigil of Easter & Holy Eucharist (Nave, High Altar)

Beginning in total darkness, the congregation joins the clergy in illuminating the Cathedral by candlelight, as we observe the Paschal mystery – the passage from darkness into light, from death into life – told through scriptural readings and chanted psalms. When the lights of the Cathedral are finally thrown up, all join in ringing in the first moments of Easter, as the Great Organ sounds for the first time since its silencing on Maundy Thursday. The Bishop of New York celebrates, the Dean of the Cathedral preaches, and the Cathedral Choirs sing.

Many years ago I attended The Great Vigil with my sister, Pam, at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC. She and I sat in chairs in a dark room with 5,000 others. As at St. John, the fire was kindled, the Paschal Candle lit and brought through the dark cathedral spreading the new Light. Thrice the candle was raised while as the cantor intoned, The Light of Christ to which I responded Thanks be to God. Many readings and then that incredibly magical moment when the lights come on, the organ sounds in all its majesty and bells are rung for the first time since the beginning of Lent. What a moment!

Holy Saturday

The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Good Friday, the second part of the triduum. The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday does not contain an opening rite, as it is a continuation of the liturgy from the previous night. This service consists of reading of the passion and adoration of the cross, interspersed with chant and choral music, followed by prayers and reception of Holy Communion.

Much beautiful, sorrowful music has been written for today: the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Thomas Tallis, Bairstow's, The Lamentation, John Sander's The Reproaches, and much more. Listen to an excerpt of the Sanders at Sanders: The Reproaches. The composer combines a chant-like verse with an extraordinary refrain, O my people, what have I done to you? in heartrendingly beautiful dissonance.

For me, Good Friday is a solemn day and I am ever reminded of what we commerate, the death of Jesus.

Have a blessed day.

Maundy Thursday 2014

Tonight we began the Great Three Days of Easter (Triduum) as we commemorated the night on which Jesus ate his last supper and instituted the meal we now celebrate to remember him. The service is full of meaning and quite beautiful. It begins as all our services do until about the middle. At the last supper Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and told them to serve others as he served them—the Mandate. They—and we—are told to love one another, that the world will know us by our love. Tonight the priests of churches around the globe washed the feet of others as a part of their ministry.

We moved ahead to the Eucharist—the Great Thanksgiving—as usual. Where the service usually ends there was no blessing, no dismissal. Instead the Reserved Sacrament (consecrated bread) was taken in procession to the Altar of Repose in the chapel, decorated like a garden. We acolytes then stripped the altar and holy table removing all decoration, linens. We extinguished the candles (the light of Christ going out) and removed the candlesticks. The Gospel Book which normally stays in the church at the end of services was taken out (the voice of Christ silenced). We washed down the holy table an act which represents the washing of Christ’s body when he was buried.

The lights were dimmed and we recessed in silence by a short route without the usual processional cross. The light in Christ’s eyes has gone out, his voice stilled, his body buried in the Altar of Repose and all is silence.

As I left a thought came to me of Christians around the world having this very same experience. I imagined it spreading through Europe, just starting across the United States, and continuing on around the globe.

All is darkness, all is silence. Waiting with joyful sorrow. 

To the Tar Heel State

I

spent a few days in North Carolina visiting family. The trip was timed for an HD broadcast of La Bohème live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It was Franco Zeffirelli’s classic production. I started crying at the beginning well before Mimi died and pretty much kept it up all the way through. It's the music that does it. Anne Lamott wrote, "How is it that you have a chord here and then another chord there and then your heart breaks open?

I went to my first NA meeting in the Tar Heel State and my first Episcopal church,  St. Paul’s, Wilmington. This St. Paul’s is not as high church as my old parish, St. Paul’s, DC, but higher than my current parish, St. Paul’s, Charlottesville. The service brought back memories of sung psalms and sung Eucharist, the choir was good, the preaching was good, and the organ, a beautiful 1995 Goulding & Wood. The organ was built with copper pipes in all the façades and a spectacular trompette-en-chamade in the rear pointing right at the congregation for those Sundays when you really want them to be awake.

 

My sister & her husband, my brother &

his wife took me to Callahan’s, 35,000 square feet of retail obscenity – at least that’s how I see it. I’m grateful it’s off season and fewer than two dozen people were there. It’s easy to imagine a summer day with more people than one could count buying all kinds of stuff they and their friends don’t need. I acknowledge the human urge to bring home souvenirs and gifts for friends but this place is so off the chain. You have to see it to believe it: beach and oceans gifts of shells, boats, floats, lighthouses, captains and more; candies and fudge; home décor of garden flags, bird feeders, bird baths, wind chimes; clothing for every need from flip-flops to T-shirts; and a Christmas décor section called St. Nick Nacks. My eyes were exhausted before I was even halfway through. Maybe I’m just annoyed that I didn’t know about this place in all the years I was collecting ornaments.

Peace

Sophie and I took our outing to the University of Virginia on Monday and it was fun. Well, for me, that is. Sophie pretty much slept through the class of first-year medical students. She must have been tired from responding to so many people on the way from the parking garage to the School of Medicine building. She brightened up the days for a lot of people.

The class was good. I got to tell my story starting with my 1993 clinical depression diagnosis, through my 2002 bipolar disorder diagnosis and into today. We talked about my current strategies for responding to my illness. There were questions about my relationship with Sophie and about her becoming a service dog. Dr. Moody from Region 10 was there and focused on the recovery side of my story.

I love doing stuff like this: sharing my story; my story with Sophie; and my story with Dr. Marzani. I enjoyed taking questions from the students and talking with a few of them afterward.

As Dr. Marzani started getting chairs she said we needed 4. I looked, puzzled. For Sophie she said. Sophie took her's and that’s where she slept. During the meet & greet after I put Sophie on our table so she could be properly adored.

We’re having beautiful days here. Sophie and I go out for hours in the front yard. She sniffs the breeze and I sit and type away.

I've moved on to Thursday now. Sophie’s at the beauty shop (groomer) for her monthly pretty-up and I'm waiting to see my wonderful therapist, Dr. Penberthy. It’s a big help for me to be working with her.

Since spring is almost here I'm acquiring a few things for the garden. I want to plant a clematis and a trumpet vine in front of my house so they can climb the columns. In the ground or in giant pots I don't know. 




Peace