Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Walking Holy Week

The week is all out of sync. Yes, Holy Week....but also not going to work as usual due to workshops and doctor's appointments. The temperatures are suddenly in the 70's. While that is wonderful, it's a little disconcerting at the same time. After a winter that seemed interminable while it was happening...suddenly it seems almost as if it never was.

Sunday was, as expected, very churchy. It all went off as planned. The nursing home was a little sparser than I had hoped. It seems that my call to the activities director didn't produce the hoped for resulting coriwd after all. I'd heard that her staff was not bringing folks to the chapel for siervice, so I thought maybe a call to say that for sure I'd be there with Palms and Passion in five voices would get something rolling. Oh well. I think the folks that were there mostly did appreciate what was there. They sang and prayed along....and my readers did a great job, as did my piano player on the new electronic piano, with its bank of buttons that looks like something from the Starship Enterprise that produce seemingly random rhythm section selections that could lead a whole marching band across a parade field if she hit the wrong one. But she maintained control of the thing and played a lovely set of Lenten-ish preludes as well as leading us through the hymns.

So here we are in Holy Week. Starting tomorrow, there will be that slow walk to the cross. We do Tenebrae on Wednesday....it isv a slow, almost ponderous chanting of Psalms while light is extinguished. One cannot come away from this without feeling moved, sobered. Then on to the Eucharist and foot washing of Maundy Thursday and Stations of Friday. Watching and waiting. I always feel in Holy Week like I am living in two worlds. Get up, go to work, life as usual by day, and by night, a move to another dimension where things slow and we focus, we watch, we slip into another level. Back and forth, a foot in each world, trying to navigate daily life while not really in it fully again until after Sunday, yet trying to be present because this is, after all the world in which I am called to live.

1 comment:

Terri said...

Kate, my computer needed some work and ended up getting a new hard drive. As a result I have lost (temporarily) all my data and address book, etc. Do you have in your email inbox the FT blog addresses? and if so can you do a reply all, including me (familyatpilarskidotcom) so I can restore my list? Let folks know in the reply all that I am trying to restore the list. If you don't have it I'll email oe of the others...