Easter.

Hello! I'm back in the office after a Triduum spent in the Pacific Northwest. It was beautiful, properly spring, lots of little bulbs popping in my mom's eastern WA garden, the pear blossoms about to burst.

This year I felt a bit of an "Easter creep." Some years Easter comes with a bang, and I'm startled into new awareness. But this year there was a long, slow build. I'm thinking a lot about my family, about how I want to structure my own intimate relationships, about my first year at seminary nearly coming to a close. I've been stacking the blocks very carefully, one little piece of information about myself at a time.

My mom and I went to an Easter Vigil service at a small church in Western Washington, near where my cousin lives. It was interesting for a couple of reasons. The first was the stellar choir - there was no good reason other than sheer and utter grace to have such powerful voices concentrated in a teeny little church, bringing the congregation to tears. Amazing solos, an astonishingly bone-shaking version of the Messiah...it was phenomenal. The second was the truly terrible rector: indeed, I don't think I have ever heard a worse Easter sermon in my life. I may have never heard a worse any kind of sermon in my life. He preached, in an oil-slick voice, about the glory of suffering, about how he preferred Catholic crosses with Jesus nailed right to them (like some kind of incredibly tacky 1st century wall hanging) rather than the empty Protestant cross. "The Resurrection CANNOT HAPPEN WITHOUT THE CROSSSS!" he thundered. Well, yes, sir, that's why we have Good Friday - remember yesterday, with all the veneration of the cross and the deathly silence? Remember how today is Easter and we're here to celebrate - yes, the Resurrection. Jesus eating fish, the empty tomb, Thomas's finger, new joy, better life, light and singing. So, you know, I set my jaw like stone and looked at him, and clenched my mom's hand to keep from running up there and preaching something actually easter-y. And he stopped right in the middle of the Eucharistic prayer - got all through "This is my body" and then coughed a little, gestured to the ALM, and slowly drank a cup of water before wiping his lips and continuting with the "This is my blood." What?! That is the peak moment of any liturgy! Everything we do builds up to this, and he, with his little silver bouffant, just hangs out drinking water while we wait on his every word. And, to top it off, he delivered Communion into my hands - literally dropped it off, without looking at me. Plop! Some, uh, bodyofchristbreadofheaven for you, you little insubordinate (my mom said the look on my face was rather deadly, but still!).

So an interesting Easter. I thought it was pretty funny, all told. I'm glad that Article 26 and my heart both tell me that the sacraments still work, now matter how dreadful the preaching/preacher. It makes me think both about humor (laughing both at my own grumpy reaction and at the horrible priest) as gift and sacraments sneaking in where I might not look.

As I think about this summer, my (first but maybe not last?) unit of CPE, and I think about what will sustain me. There's a lot of apprehension. I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing, but I also know that sometimes I will say the wrong thing. I'm scared to enter people's lives at their most vulnerable moments, but I also know that I must (and not just for my M. Div.). But I think about humor, about the ways people who get to know each other laugh together. I think about how the worst of puns can absolutely kill me - I double over, weeping and laughing. I think about how sometimes sacraments are hiding in the mud like the daffodils, sometimes are hiding in the drudgery of paperwork, sometimes are hiding in the 2:00 a.m. bleary typing of school papers.

Easter indeed.




-Shelly