Mystical Murmurs: My Interfaith Life

Easter Sunday was wonderful, though the weather was cold here. After singing two long services that morning, I should have been dead on my feet -- but all I could think was "He is risen!" I went home and cooked furiously, and (for once) everyone came to the table without squabbling about anything. No sooner had my Easter euphoria worn off, however, than bad news hit. One of the parish's dearest older members passed away peacefully in the hospital on Easter afternoon. Not such a bad time to die, I guess -- but I will miss her. I had planned to visit her on Holy Saturday, but caved into time pressures and did not. There's a real lesson here for me. Never put it off. At her viewing this evening, she looked as calm, gracious and elegant in death as she had in life. And it made me smile to see that at her feet were the ashes of her beloved German Shepherd, Basil. I am planning on this, too -- I want all my doggies with me when I rise! On Holy Saturday the parish lost ano

12:20 AM. It's Holy Saturday now, and I should be in bed. But my mind is racing. During the Triduum, I lose track of time. One disaster follows another. They blend together. On Maundy Thursday, our Lord is betrayed, and led away; we strip His altar, and the Rector washes the cold marble surface with vinegar. We leave the chancel in darkness, by the side aisles, without reverencing the cross. We have removed our choir cottas while the altar was stripped; mine trails along, limp and white in my hand. Like Lot's wife, I always turn in my grief and look back. The empty tabernacle yawns open. The darkness of the church is unbroken. The congregation shuffles out quietly in the shadows. No one speaks. In the garden of repose, it's nearly as dark. Ten candles are alight on the smaller altar where the bread and wine have been placed. Forsythia blooms in vases, and the lilies have opened. On the windowsills, clear votives glimmer. The weather has turned unseasonably cold, and the wi

I took my lunch hour out in the courtyard today where I work. It's a nice space, with a big, grassy center, wide paths, and ample benches. It's my favorite place to hang out during working hours, whenever I get a break. In full summer, there's plenty of shade from trees around the perimeter, and beneath the trees are bushes, where birds and squirrels keep busy. We have a lot of wildlife in our courtyard. And we also have bees. The bees make sure I can enjoy my solitude. They're also fuzzy. I tend to like fuzzy creatures. These are bumblebees, mind, not nasty hornets or yellowjackets, which would have me on the run. Bumblebees (which my grandma always called "humblebees," a name I really like) are very peaceful and don't sting unless they feel threatened (which is fair enough). Today there were three near my bench, flying in large circles, chasing each other. Occasionally they circled around me curiously, and, though they are pretty able navigators, one of

After the first Palm Sunday procession/service without rain in about 6 years (!!!), I raced around madly doing errands: food shopping, laundry, buying Easter plants, candy, etc. You know the drill. Now I am trying to wind down for Holy Week. It feels to me like the events we're recalling are so world-shaking that they can be approached only with silent reverence. I never feel like I get this quite right. I'm pretty good at silent reverence, but my life tends to get in the way of it. But this year I'm getting a break. My husband is leaving Wednesday to see his mother, in central New York State, in order to do her taxes (when I protested that it's Holy Week, he responded that it's not Holy Week for him -- which I guess I can't argue about -- and that I won't be around anyway, since I'll be at church all the time). So, in the evenings at least, I should have relative silence (my son will be home in the evenings, and my daughter, since she goes to a college

This is a picture of the Church on the Pike's new meditation chapel (I have been trying to think of another name for it, but have not gotten very far). If it looks like it's in the basement -- well, it is, in the former youth room. The altar itself is a very nice, solid one in oak, and memorializes some parishioners from earlier times. The altar was formerly in use by the Sunday School for their chapel service, but was abandoned at some point. So we nabbed it! The dossal is the one that hung behind the altar in its previous location. You can't see the detail, but it's dark blue with golden fleurs - de - lis . We are so inept that we had to have one of our neighbors come in and hang it for us! Then we realized that it was so long that it covered the baseboard heater, and we were probably going to have a fire. In full panic mode, several of our thinner volunteers crawled behind the altar and pinned the dossal up with safety pins. How professional we are! LOL ! We nicke