Another Sacred Day

Every new level of awareness brings its own trouble!  This week I found myself resenting the well wishers who presented me with ultra sincere wishes that I have an absolutely wonderful Christmas Day with my family.  Did they think it was a coronation?

Then, yesterday, at work I grew weary of the ubiquitous Merry Christmas that I was hearing everywhere that had taken the tone of  Have A Good Day.  I shared that with our administrative assistant whose real life includes being married to a minister.  She gets me and nodded quickly.  Unlike the agnostics who want to take God out of holiday greetings, I would like to limit it to those who cherish God in their daily lives.  Too hard core?

Christmas every morning and Thanksgiving every night is something I used to hear at meetings.  The promise of a life heretofore unimagined is what program promises and what it has delivered to me.  I was in a meeting this morning and thinking of my next destination which was church.  I thought about how much the service would resemble a meeting and how those things made it attractive to me.

My church was built out of a horse barn 52 years ago by area folks who wanted their own Episcopal Church instead of traveling to the next town.  It is a plain and simple place, it's cross made of two fence pieces.  We sit in chairs that can be brought around in a circle. This morning we were a small enough group to assemble next to the alter for communion, passing eucharist in a circle one to one another.  As in a meeting, some readings were read by volunteers and there were prayers spoken of thanksgiving and pleas of intercession for others.

It's not always such a small, intimate gathering but this morning as we pondered such greatness bestowed upon a teenaged girl in first century Palestine, it was just right. Not a coronation and not an ordinary day either.

Just another sacred day in which lies great promise.  It carries the likelihood that it will pass without struggle.  And I ask in my higher powers grace to keep me away from a drink or its substitute a day at a time.