This is my first Holy Week to not be leading a parish in over twenty five years.

It is another new walk as a person who happens to be a priest.

Holy Week began for me on this past Friday. The Mission Amplification Team does an outreach project once a quarter, and on Friday we served lunch at The Beacon, a ministry of the Diocese of Texas with the people who live on the streets of downtown Houston.

We helped finish the preparations for the lunch which was certainly restaurant worthy, and then filled trays as the men and women walked through the line.  I was the last person in the serving line, and the choices I offered were tomatoes, croutons, thousand island dressing, and ranch dressing.  

I had been reminded in my  morning time of prayer that all we meet we treat as Christ, and so I was intentional as I greeted each person– to look them in the eye and smile.  Sometimes we even had time for a brief conversation.

It was Holy Communion.

This morning I went to Palm Sunday worship at my local church.  In the familiarity of the liturgy, there were portions that were different from my last twenty or so years of Palm Sunday liturgy.

I am in new unfamiliar familiar territory.

I am having lunch with friends today, an event I scheduled because I wasn’t responsible for worship.

I’m planning to end the day with Evensong at another local church.

Not in charge, I am walking with Jesus.

This will be a Holy Week.

I’ve been on vacation in Oregon with my family. It’s their Spring Break and so I went to play with the grandboys while their parents worked.

We started the week by making lists of what we most wanted to do this week. We called our week “anything can happen,” and we knew there would be good surprises in store.

Here’s the list written by the grandboys, a third grader and kindergartener. Number ones had been accomplished before I could copy the list:

Anything can happen wEEK

2.Tell story

3.Cook a lots’o stuff

4.GET NEW 🐱

5.DECORATE EASTER EGGGGGGGGGS

6.SEE DUMBO 🐘

Vanilla cake 🎂 💸

SFPILS

COOKING STUFF

2. 1 INGREDIENT BANNA ICE CREAM🍌🍦

3. STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE🍓🎂

4.WAKCY CAKE🤪🎂

5.EVERYDAY PANCAKES🥞

6.MASTER RECIPE FOR BISCUITS AND SCONES

7.CAKE IN A SHOEBOX 🎂👞📦

We’d already made cookies,

slime,

and seen a movie

before I’d had time to make a copy of our list (Austin loved removing items as we checked them off).

The boys not being in a church that observes Lent, we also engaged in some Easter preparations.

Egg dying,

card making,

and decorating.

Later in the week Austin had added “spills” to the week. We had lots of laughter and laundry with our unending clumsiness.

Nighttime was spent sharing a bed. Once again I was a grandma sandwich. This time we had the addition of a new cat, Alley Cat, who enjoyed sleeping on my head and giving love bites and licks throughout the night.

Before sleep, the reading aloud was now done by the boys, both good readers. I made up stories, and we always ended with prayers–an adapted Ignatian Examen followed by Compline. When I asked Austin when he’d felt closest to God, he’d reply, “I always feel close to God.”

Before I left today, Jonas and I were looking at our photos of our anything can happen week, and he titled each of the photos. Most of them he named, “Making.” Yes, we did a lot of making this week, and the best making of all was the relationship kind of making:

Memories and connections with one another that are one of God’s very best gifts to us.

I am so very grateful to have a job with vacation days and the financial resources to see my very far away family at least once a season.

I do not take it for granted.

I’m moving. Again. I’m hoping this move will last longer than the last eight.

My friend, Ginny, came into town to help stage and pack and say goodbye to the Rectory. The Diocese has provided packers, movers, and unpackers.  I am supported, once again.

In the midst of the busyness of the weekend of pre-moving, I had the gift of attending two Eucharists.  It was a good break from packing to clean up, to put my collar on, and go to worship.

As God would have it, in the midst of my own endings and beginnings, one worship was a beginning– the dedication of a new worship space.   The other worship was an ending–the final worship in a parish that was closing.  Both were holy.

Saturday night I attended worship at Holy Comforter Episcopal Church.  Before the Tax Day Flood, they had begun their process of preparing to build a new worship space.  On the eve of the final Sunday after the Epiphany, the church was full of joy and tears as the Bishop set apart one thing after another as holy.  A baby was baptized.  Everything was shiny and new.

Sunday morning, I attended worship at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church.  After struggling for a number of years, the parish was no longer viable.  And so another Bishop gathered the people for the final Eucharist.  Although only a handful of people had worshipped in the space the last few years, on this final Sunday, the church was nearly full as all sorts of people gathered to say good bye.  Again there were tears, though this time they were tears of grief.  But there was also joy as old friends reunited one final time.

So the rhythm continues. Ending. Beginning.  Beginning.  Ending.

We move towards the ending of another season of the church year.  Epiphany is drawing to an end.  In two days, we begin Lent.

John O’Donohue says it so well:

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was an anything can happen day. As we left Taos, my friend and I had a plan for the drive to Albuquerque. With the first surprise of the day, we decided to let the day lead the way.

We started with coffee at Coffee Apothecary, our coffee place in Taos, where the owners feel like friends. They sent us on our way with gifts of freshly roasted coffee beans.

As we drove south, the flag was up at the Rio Grande Gorge Visitors Center in Pilar. My heart had been heavy throughout the trip seeing the consequences of the government shutdown, and the innocent workers who had been effected. We circled back and went in and welcomed the rangers back to work. As we had conversation, we all teared up.

We continued to let the day unfold. We drove to a favorite place on the Rio Grande River and met a woman from California celebrating her birthday. She told us her next stop, after her hike, was at a winery. Departing before her, we made a stop at the winery, left her a birthday note, and paid for a bottle of wine for her when she arrived later. Such fun!

We next drove to another favorite place–Abiqui, where we had a picnic lunch beside the Chama River.

We then took a drive through mountains, calderas,

reservations, before ending the route in Bernalillo as the sun set.

Since today is the day I fly back to Houston, it’s most likely another anything can happen day.

Beginning with coffee then worship at the local Episcopal church, I’ll see what God has in store.

Church. Home.