6:15 AM DB has left for Mexico, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I'm reading Morning Prayer, and the following is one of the praise psalms appointed for Easter Day :

Halleluja!

Praise God in his holy temple:

praise him in the firmament of his power.

Praise him for his mighty acts;

praise him for his excellent greatness.

Praise him with the blast of the ram's-horn;

praise him with lyre and harp.

Praise him with timbrel and dance:

praise him with strings and pipe.

Praise him with resounding cymbals;

praise him with loud-clanging cymbals.

Let everything that has breath

praise the Lord.

Hallelujah!

I love the images in this Psalm (150). Why don't we praise him with timbrel and dance in our services?


Holy Week Wasn't So Holy (for Me) This Year

It sounded like a good idea at the time: 4 days of my "reading week" spent consulting with Head Start. After all, I need the money, and besides, it would be good to see all my friends and to be doing something I am good at. I had from Wednesday to the following Friday off from school (to catch up), so surely I could spare 4 days out of that nine days.

I forgot that all day that Wednesday would be taken up with PLANNING the workshops I had to present. There had been no time before then, with the pile of reading that had to be done, along with papers to write. Oh, I had sent off my outline to the program, and then an agenda, but the major work was still to be done. Besides, when I got home Thursday and Friday, I could do some reading for my Theology paper, couldn't I?

Well, no, I couldn't. I was zonked. I barely made it through dinner. That's OK, I can read on the weekend. The best laid plans. I DID read, but not enough to feel that I was ready to take my mid-term, the one that we are on our honor to do with our books closed. In addition to other readings and preparations, I had to put together a lesson in Praise Psalms for Christian Education the next day. When, in what weak moment, did I say I would do THAT? I could hardly say no to something for church, could I? This will be my new vocation.

Don't panic. There is Monday, when you get home from doing the observation/feedback for Head Start. No? You're too tired? That's OK. Tuesday, when you are riding to Canada for 6 hours to spend the night with DB on his business trip, you can read Theology. Then on Wednesday, while he is doing the business thing, you can begin to organize your notes for the Mid-term. (Oh, this is Holy Week? I forgot. I'm missing all the services that make this week so important to me--and the rest of Christianity.)

I set up in the hotel room at 8 a.m., and begin to type my notes (that's one way I study). At 9:30, DB is back, ready to go home. ??!! What? I have 4 pages done of what will eventually turn out to be 33. I thought I had the whole day to do this. It took me 45 minutes to get set up, with my little printer and all the cables, and to remember how differently the laptop works in funny little ways that take time to correct when you do them wrong.

So, on the way home, another 6 hours, I read more Theology. We didn't get home in time for Tenebrae, one of my favorite little services. So I got right on the big computer to begin to organize my notes. I put in my disk from the laptop, and...the font from the laptop doesn't compute. All I have is junk. Well, that's what it looked like to a panicked eye. I got it into a font that I could read, and began to type.

Except for Maundy Thursday 7 a.m. and evening pot luck and foot-washing, I typed from then until Good Friday at 5 p.m., taking time out only for meals and to reread parts of the history that I had forgotten completely. (Good Friday services? No time for them.) At 5, I opened my test (from the E-Mail, where it had been waiting for me, threateningly, for a week), looked at it, and...my mind went blank. I sat there for several minutes, stunned. I couldn't recall any of it.

This is the biggest trauma I have had during this seminary experience. I never used to panic at tests. I've always been able to recall information in the past. I can quote you from all the Early Childhood experts even now. But these tests terrify me. I recovered enough to begin to answer some of the questions (all essay; the first question worth 50% of my grade and requiring a minimum of a 5-page essay). I worked for nearly three hours, and my brain shut down completely. Information I knew as well as the back of my hand (a slight exaggeration!) was gone, lost in my grey matter somewhere, and I still had 10 questions to go.

I stopped, made and ate dinner, and during the meal, some of the information came back to me. I jotted it down on a piece of paper (is this cheating? I don't care at this point), finished my meal and went back to the test. It was nearly 4 hours before I finished. Good-bye, Good Friday.

My next plan was to hammer out that Theology paper on Saturday (I missed the Holy Saturday morning service), view the video on "Elizabeth" which would become my film report for Gender class, and finish all this work before the Easter Vigil at 8 p.m. Hah! That Theology paper (which I had been working on in odd moments for a week) took me all day, with time out to watch the video. I dashed out to the Vigil ( I was reading a lesson, so I had to go), which was wonderful and a perfect break from that stupid paper.

I REALLY wanted Easter Sunday to be free of all schoolwork. But it wasn't to be, even though I worked Saturday night, after the Vigil, until 11. I finished the Theology paper, so I still had the film review to go. After church on Sunday, I knocked that out in an hour, feeling like I finally had some time to myself and DB. Then I remembered; I had a 5-page "self-evaluation" that is to be handed in on Tuesday. Monday I get ready to go to school, drive for 2 1/2 hours, then try to get some of the reading done that I couldn't get to in READING WEEK.

Another evening shot writing a paper. I finally got smart and printed off selections from this journal where I had talked about what was happening in this new adventure. It still took me 3 1/2 hour to get the darn thing done.

So here it is, Monday morning. I have to pack, still, and make that long drive. And Holy Week? It has come and gone and I missed most of it. Not the incredible Easter service, however, and that made up for some of the others.

Life is good, though too frantic sometimes. Thanks be to God, Amen


~back~ next~ home~ ~Email Me!~
~ Collaborative ~ Archives ~ Spiritual ~