We had a staff retreat today to plan the 2005-2006 church calendar. Went to a lovely retreat center that I’d love to visit again on my own, but they’re closing the place next month. Bummer. I felt a little twinge of grief, not for me, but for them, and I had a little emotional deja vu: this has happened to me before. Several years ago I went with some friends to a restaurant that had been generating a fair bit of buzz and good reviews. When we got there, the manager informed us that this would be their last night in business. We were the only patrons there. It was a lovely meal, though flavored with sadness and loss. (See the movie Big Night.)

Anyway, we finished our planning retreat at 3 p.m. today, and now I’m sitting in a coffeehouse near C’s day care, catching up on e-mails in the small amount of time I have before I have to pick her up. OK, and blogging.

I enjoyed Holy Week and Easter much more this year than last—I guess I feel more settled. I think a highlight for me was the Easter Vigil. We normally have a Saturday night service each week, which we cancelled last year on Easter Eve. This year, rather than cancel again, I offered to do a modified Easter Vigil, adapted to take place at our normal Saturday night time (5:30), and much shorter than the multiple-hour ritual of the Vigil. Oh, I had a ball planning it. It’s so fun to really stretch out and be creative in worship, rather than the perfunctory fill-in-the-blanks exercise that Sunday morning can become when you’re pressed for time. And with the exception of our senior pastor and my family, none of the attendees had ever experienced an Easter Vigil. So that was totally cool, showing them something new (actually, extremely old).

All that said, yesterday I was totally.wiped.out. I got dressed at 4:30 in the afternoon, and only then because I had to pick up C from day care.

In exciting news, I wore a dress on Easter Sunday that I have not been able to wear for three years (since before I got pregnant). That made my whole day. Thanks be to God for treadmills and control-top stockings. Yahoo.

And on a different note, perhaps counter-productive from the above paragraph, hubby and I found out that our local Tex-Mex place here has Amy’s Ice Cream. Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! We chortled in our joy. Other Texans in exile will resonate with our chortling, to be sure.

I had a bookend experience today. I don’t know what else to call it.

Nine years ago, I was working in a consulting/technical writing job I really didn’t enjoy. OK, that I was growing to hate. And perhaps not unrelated, I was feeling increasing joy in my involvement at the church. One afternoon in early spring, I left a client site for the 20-mile commute back to the office. My favorite time of day—free, in the car with the radio and my thoughts. It was a beautiful day, a lovely winter-finally-tipping-into-spring day, blue sky touched with high clouds. As I pulled onto the interstate, a song came on the radio (God bless KPFT, 90.1, Pacifica Radio, Houston Texas) that gave words and expression to this horrible ache that I felt for a life more meaningful, more nourishing, more me. It was a song by a woman I’d never heard of named Carrie Newcomer. This is as close as I’ve been to a “road to Damascus” experience.

Wonder at something bigger than yourself, something larger than you know that’s calling. Stand up in the middle of the storm, be thankful for the calm that will surely follow.

It’s not my favorite of her songs, but it was the right song at the right time.

Now, today, nine years later, after lots of discernment and church jobs and two moves and seminary classes and internships and the search process, I left our planning meeting, not frustrated, but content beyond my imagining; but again I was pulling onto a highway under a canopy of blue sky and quiet white clouds, and listening to one of Carrie’s albums, and hearing a different song this time—another that is not one of my favorites, but the right song at the right time:

Gonna live my life like it don’t get much better, walk right in like I own this joint, get right down to the heart of the matter, live straight to the point, straight to the point!

Life is good.