At least as far as the liturgical year is concerned.
Yay! Ending of Year A. Woo Hoo to the beginning of Year B. Finally.
In the parish where I served, for a number of years, we had a custom of reading aloud, in community, the primary Gospel to be read in the new liturgical year. Early days in the new year, we’d gather in the nave, seated in a circle around the altar, and take turns reading through the gospel, chapter by chapter.
It was usually a dozen or so of us. A family might bring their children, an older couple might come. Clergy, Junior Daughters of the King, random folks.
We’d light some candles, begin with Evening Prayer, and the entire Gospel was our Scripture reading.
I’ve been remembering the gift those readings were, especially since Scripture was written to be read aloud, and in community.
At sunset on Saturday night, a new year begins. I have this wild idea, in this year like no other, to create a zoom event for the public reading of the Gospel of Mark.
If you’d like to join me at 6pm on Saturday night to welcome the new year with reading scripture in community, and closing with compline, contact me, and I’ll send you the zoom link.
It was a day in California. Shelley’s visitation. Shelley’s funeral. Shelley’s burial. Shelley’s reception.
This was the most people I’d been with since March. It felt like I was in a land far, far away. Too many people were not wearing masks or wearing them over their mouths only. It was impossible for me to be as safe as I feel at home, though I did my best in case I’d brought germs from Texas. But it was a good reality check of why the pandemic is continuing to spread. Especially in settings of grief.
My therapist had reminded me that in the midst of being responsible for officiating at the funeral that I was grieving, too. After the reception, I had several hours until my flight left. It was time for me to grieve.
I thought of the ways I could spend the open time. Since I was only twenty minutes from the border, I decided to drive to Mexico to see the “beautiful” wall.
Well. I didn’t actually go into Mexico. I was a little concerned about some glitch that might not get me back into the US in time for my flight. But I drove along the border and saw all the ways we’ve made sure that those we don’t want to enter are kept out.
My best photos of that not beautiful at all wall were from the parking lot of the outlet mall that backs up to Mexico. Yet another strange land on this unusual day.
I am now in the midst of the two flight long home that includes a three hour layover in between (last minute plans have limited options). I have more space to sit and ponder.
It was good to have time to be with my California cousins. I had fine conversations with all sorts of folks about life and death and God. I listened a lot. I loved the San Diego weather experienced from the hill top of my cousin’s home.
I was particularly aware of the cloud of witnesses surrounding us in this mourner’s land. As I prayed before the service, I could feel the prayerful presence of relatives who I love so dearly that have welcomed Shelley home. Dear ones like Uncle Jamie and Aunt Frances, her grandparents; my dad, her great uncle; and Grandma Blanche, her great grandma.
As God would have it, part of Grandma Blanche’s farm is still in my family. We rent our portion out to be farmed, and the rent check came in a week or so ago. My mom generously offered to pay my brothers’ and my way to the funeral and to treat the whole family to dinner in California. I loved thinking that Grandma Blanche was taking care of her family, and of the great granddaughter she was meeting for the first time in heaven.
I did have to wonder how Grandma Blanche, a devout Southern Baptist, felt about treating us to margaritas and beers with our dinner.
I can’t help but think about the hospitality that thrives in heaven. No walls for sure. Welcoming arms. And I suspect toasts abound.
After all, scripture tells us that crying and tears of sorrow are not to be found in heaven.
From Revelation 21: Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had passed away….God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
Tears, mourning, and death are for us who are still traveling in this foreign land.
I’ve been very careful since the pandemic began. Masking, social distancing, washing hands, rarely leaving my home. Except for one Sunday when I was one of three persons at a live-stream worship, I’ve worshiped via the Internet. I haven’t received communion since Lent, 2020.
But today I am in a motel in San Diego, California. My 28 year old cousin died unexpectedly, and I have come to be with my family and to officiate at the burial. We’ll be outside and masked, but this is another pandemic first for me.
I know that funerals can be hot spots, and I will do every safe practice I can. But when I heard the news, I knew this was what God would have me do.
I won’t say I’m not a bit anxious. I am. A good part of my job this past six months has been helping churches plan how to gather safely. I know the challenges.
I’m also grieving. New grief on top of all of the other grief that my heart has been carrying. Like so very many of us this Coronatide.
This morning while I was on the plane to San Diego, a sermon I preached and recorded Friday before I left, live-streamed during worship at Grace Episcopal, Houston. It was a stewardship sermon about how we live our lives loving God and loving our neighbor.
So I’ve left my pod for two days, and then I’ll return to my pod again. But today and tomorrow I’ll be loving God and loving neighbors in California.
Almost everyday at 4.15, I stop whatever I’m doing, put in my ear buds, and log into Facebook.
The sisters of Our Lady of Grace, Beech Grove, Indiana, livestream their evening prayers. They began inviting us to join them early in the pandemic, and it has become my Coronatide worship.
Those that have had the gift of worshipping with the Sisters know the Benedictine rhythm of evening prayer —opening words, a hymn, a slow chanting of Psalms, a scripture, silence, Gospel antiphon, singing of the Magnificat, Gospel antiphon, intercessory prayers, the Lord’s Prayer, a blessing, the closing words, and then a soft bell to let us know that prayers are over. You can tell I’ve done this a few times to know the liturgical drill.
Except a few weeks ago they added more bells. Rung with purpose. With an exclamation mark of sound. Before the gentle bell at the end.
When coronavirus deaths began mounting in Indiana, the Sisters decided to end their evening prayers by ringing one bell to remember each person from Indiana who had died from COVID-19 that day. They did it to honor each Hoosier (their words) who was no longer with us because of the pandemic.
I have to admit. Sometimes I want to skip out early. It’s hard to hear those bells. To count them. To know the grief associated with each bell. And to know that if we had better health care in our country, for all people, and if we’d had had a thoughtful national plan for fighting the coronavirus in the spring, that there would most likely be fewer bells rung each evening at the Monastery. Maybe there would be nights when the bells didn’t ring. Maybe we’d whoop an Alleluia! instead.
The fewest bells rung on an evening that I’ve been with the Sisters is 4. The most is 29. Each bell is a grief-filled prayer.
In Texas, where I live, ringing daily bells to remember Texans that have died from Covid-19 would take a long, long time. Much longer than those Hoosier bells.
In America, ringing daily bells to remember all of our brother and sister Americans who died from the pandemic—would the bells ever stop?
And if we rang one tone of bell for people of color who had died? Or for the death of people without insurance? Or people who died alone? Would we begin to appreciate how much we must change and how deep our sorrow is?
Yesterday, 1,164 Americans died from COVID-19. That we know of. By the Sisters bell ringing rate, we’d be ringing bells for 95 minutes.
Today, in Texas, 189 people died from COVID-19. We’d ring the bells for 16 minutes.
And in Houston, where I live? 18 people died today. The number of bells we would ring in my city would be more than than the number of Hoosier death bells I heard at prayers tonight from the Monastery.
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The Lord Almighty grant is a peaceful night and a perfect end.
AMEN
May the Divine Assistance be always with us and with our absent sisters and brothers.
House of Grace 