1. I took part in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church's noon Good Friday liturgy today. It was austere. No music. The altar was stripped. The priests were dressed in black. A cross stood in front of the altar bearing a crown of thorns. There was no music. The bread and wine of the communion were not sanctified during the service -- rather, we were served bread and wine that had been sanctified the night before on Maunday Thursday. Before taking communion, we were all invited to process to the front of the church, light a candle, and kneel at the foot of the cross and pray, leaving our lit candle at the cross. When I worshiped at St. Mary's, I regularly lit a candle in the chapel. Within myself, I called my prayers "opening the vault". During the week, I would store inside myself the concerns I had for family and friends. I could never be expected to remember and recite all of these concerns in a moment of prayer while lighting the candle. But, I could open the vault of all these stored concerns. During the Good Friday service, when I went to the foot of the cross, I knelt, put my lit candle in the sandy material that held our candles, and I opened the vault. Many of you reading this right now were in my vault: you are troubled, going through an illness, facing the difficulties of aging, going through challenging change in your life, supporting a family member who is ill, have had good fortune and are grateful, have lost a loved one to death, and so on. For me, the power of prayer is in the connection I feel with those in my prayers. Miles separate me from almost everyone in the vault, but prayer somehow closes the gap of physical distance, replacing the distance with closeness.
2. Molly fixed a rich and delicious potato soup for her family and the Deke and I, down for a visit, got to join in. We were warmed not only by the soup, but by the fact that the Deke used to make this soup for Adrienne, Patrick, and Molly and passed on the recipe and so Molly is warming her family with the same soup that warmed her so many times growing up.
3. I ended the day watching a Merchant of Venice themed episode of Inspector Lewis. Portia's words to Shylock, that the "quality of mercy is not strained" came into play between Lewis and Hathaway. Will Lewis forgive Hathaway? Hathaway discovered who killed Lewis' wife in the hit and run accident in London some time ago, but was slow to reveal his discovery to Lewis, deeply angering Lewis. This part of the story rendered the main murder plot of the episode, well, not quite meaningless, but forgettable.
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