I wish Blogger had a feature to allow you to customize the date on your posts. I mean, it does, to an extent—Thursday, April 17 or 4.17.2003 or even 20030417. Had I my druthers, though, today's post would be headed Maundy Thursday.
When I was in academia, the year moved in a slow march—Fall semester, Spring semester—and so the years went, two by two and one by one: Commencement in May felt like New Year's Day. The business cycle is a nervous waltz—three over four. The Moon moves slow and steady, thin to fat and back again.
For five years I served the Church directly, and gave my life over to the rhythms of the liturgical calendar, the feasts and cycles, the forty- and fifty-day blocks that chart her course, and their peculiar poetry marked my days. Shrovetide, Triduum, Eastertide, Ascension Thursday, Pentecost, Corpus Christi... Septuagaesima, Sexuagaesima, Quinquagaesima... Christ The King is when Winter comes a-howlin' in: Assumption marks high high Summer. Advent, Gaudete, Nativity, Innocents, Holy Family, Epiphany, Presentation: my book of days.
The year since I stepped down as choirmaster has passed in a blur. It's been measured by events, rather than mile markers: the birth of our son, our epic trip West, the places we've been and the things that we've done. Internal measures. The external markers—holidays, birthdays, anniversaries—have all caught me unawares this year.
I've torn away the frame of reference I held for half a decade, and have not settled into another. The days are rhythmless, random. Weeks pass and I wonder what the hell I've been doing with this time, this precious time, my one and only life.
Living it, of course, just like always—but living with nothing to measure it against.
No comments:
Post a Comment