Keep Watch

Just back from visiting a friend from Church of the Good Shepherd, Wilga, who is in intensive care. On the way out of the house to the hospital, I stopped to check in with our downstairs neighbor, Donna -- there had been another incident with our next-door neighbor, a very affable and very alcoholic man, which concerned access to their apartment. I told Donna I was on the way to the hospital, and she said how cool it was that part of my job was to visit people. I wish I'd asked her what she meant; I agree, but I didn't expect her excitement about it.

Hospitals are amazing places, sacred, hushed, liminal. Like churches, they are places of healing and intensity, care, stress, and earnest prayer. They are alot like churches in other ways too: it's hard to find parking, impossible to know where to go after you get through the entrance, there are strange smells and noises, and an unlikely collection, cross-section of people.

Parish of the Messiah (when did it move from being Church of the Messiah to Parish of the Messiah? There must be a story, stories, there) is much more fun to visit than the hospital. What a joy this Sunday was! And not only because there were bagpipers at the end for the procession out, from the Sutherland Pipe Band, a group which pratices weekly at Messiah... It was a joyful Sunday all around, from Paul and David's terrible puns to Bic's prelude, Bev and Daryl and Katie and Pat and Steve humoring me before the service, and Iza getting to meet folks...oh, I'm going to get in trouble because I'm losing names faster than I'm learning them. Apoligies to Michael and John and Meg and everyone else whose names I've forgotten. Suffice to say, the service went beautifully, folks were more than kind, I felt like we were able to genuinely pray together, I didn't fall off the platform or set my alb on fire or lose my sermon or knock the chalice all over the fair linen or just plain pass out from nervousness.

At coffee hour, I got to meet a whole crew of folks -- long-time members, first-time visitors, folks that were returning and thinking about coming back. It was wonderful -- somehow I'm even more excited about next Sunday, to experience being still there, actually the rector. Which reminds me, I better start looking at next week's readings :)

'za and I are planning for her family's arrival in Seattle. We've also a gift to celebrate, the preparation of a painting of the field where she accepted my proposal. The piece is by Christa Malay; this is her watercolor sketch. We need to decide if we want summer (which on Lopez means golden fields and green leaves) or fall (which in Lopez means green fields and golden leaves). Either way, it is a place that makes us both grin like fools...