Today in church...
- Heard an awfully fine sermon from My Favorite Seminarian, one which has convicted me that I need to seriously consider and pray about going on our annual mission trip to Navajoland next summer. Oh, my, there are so many reasons why I haven't gone along on this trip. In the meantime, as she preached I remembered an uncomfortable conversation I had with God as a teenager, "I want to be a Christian, and all, but I don't want to be a MISSIONARY." (Trust me, I know that one week in Bluff, Utah does not a missionary make!)
- We had a visiting priest - a woman! I think she was there because our rector had planned to be out of town. I had the delight of seeing a woman deacon and a woman Gospeller, two separate people serving AT THE SAME TIME. Such visions are few and far between around here.
- My friend S. was there! She is scheduled to deliver her third child by Caesarean tomorrow. This is a sweet baby girl who we initially feared would come very early...like, at 32 weeks. But she has gone to full term and that is a great blessing! She had baby Emma with her (9 months) and looked great.
- My friend C. and her family were there, too...my first time to meet her newly adopted daughter from China. A darling baby!
- The announcements took for-freaking-ever
- Fr. David carried on the conversational tone from the announcements to the Eucharistic table by going off on a long riff about when or whether we should kneel or stand during Eucharistic Prayer C, and why. Mercy!
- As I left the loft for communion, our wonderful organist signalled to me to pass her the hymnal she needed for the Eucharistic hymn. Since she was improvising with one hand, I offered to open the book for her. "What page?" I hissed. "861," she said. I took about forever to get it open and place on the rack in front of her. (She was improvising all this time.) She looked puzzledly at the music, which was an arrangment of "In Paradisum," the part of the funeral service that is chanted at the committal. Then she started flipping back to get to the CORRECT piece, numbered 816. Much more appropriate for a communion hymn.
- I had to stop on the stairs and laugh hysterically at the idea of folks wondering why they were hearing "In Paradisum" at the Eucharist.
- Sally (organist) didn't need my help, clearly. She could improvise for hours while finding her own page number plus cooking a full Italian meal and diapering a baby.
- After church we went into the chapel and tied knots in a flannel prayer blanket for my friend Janet. You have probably seen this done...each knot contains a prayer. Here's a photo of some folks knotting one...ours will have to be washed and sterilized before it can be given to her, because the chemo is going to wreck her immune system. But the prayers will certainly not wash out.
- On the way to church I cross the Lake Lewisville bridge. That lake - is 9 feet above its "full" level. That lake - was very, very close to that bridge.
- It's starting to rain again.
