Lessons from Sabbatical - Holy Week (and Mandy Patinkin)

This week, I have found my mind wandering back to Holy Weeks of a couple of decades ago, which was the last time (other than my years in Tanzania) when I didn’t have any responsibilities for presiding at anything or the music. This has felt like a strangely empty week – I have a deep awareness of the week that is unfolding around me, but I have no responsibilities for anything.

When I was a church musician, especially the last couple of years before beginning my theological studies, Holy Week was a very busy time, playing for all of the services at Trinity Lutheran Church, while also trying to sing in the choir for as many services as possible at my own church, Knox Shuniah United. It usually looked something like:
Thursday: Play for Maundy Thursday at Trinity, then zip across town for a choir practice at Knox
Friday: Play for Good Friday at Trinity in the morning, then sing in the Cantata at Knox in the evening
Sunday: Attend the Easter Sunrise Service; cross town to play for the Easter service at Trinity, then zip back across town to sing in the Easter service at Knox

When I started with this whole clergy thing, my Holy Weeks all of a sudden involved a whole lot fewer services!

 

But this year the week feels empty in comparison, like it hasn’t felt since the year 2000. This afternoon, I did something that I haven’t done in many years – I sat down at the piano to play and sing through some of my favourite Holy Week hymns. And I felt those words and melodies deeply in my soul. I have the luxury to stay in the moment of what is going on in the story, rather than practicing Easter hymns and anthems while it isn’t even Good Friday yet, or writing my Easter Sermon before the “Hosannas!” have faded from my ears.

 

This morning as I ate breakfast, I listened to an interview with Mandy Patinkin on CBC Radio. (He is bringing his one-man show to Saint John next week, so this was a promotional interview.) He is always an interesting interview subject, and one thing that he said this morning caught my ear. He was asked about how he has managed to keep his (singing and speaking) voice in shape over the decades, and in part of his reply he shared some advice that he was given when he was in Evita at the age of 25.

 

“Oscar Eustace, who runs the public theatre in New York, refers to actors, singers, and anyone who tells a story, as ‘emotional athletes.’ 99% of the game, for me, is caretaking of my being so that I’m rested, I’m exercised, I’m eating right, I’m meditating, and I’m doing everything I can to conserve my energy and pace myself so that I can get up there for 2 hours and give you everything I have.”

 

Emotional Athletes. I think that I would probably include clergy in that category, along with other story-keepers and storytellers. I’m starting to recognize that a lot of the fatigue that I’ve been carrying – the fatigue that made rest my number 1 sabbatical goal – this fatigue is more than just physical and mental fatigue but it’s also emotional fatigue.

 

We carry the stories of all of the people that we encounter and hold these stories alongside the sacred story in an attempt to make meaning. And so all of this advice from Mandy Patinkin about resting and exercising and eating right and meditating (praying) and pacing – this is not just about managing physical and mental fatigue, but it’s also about managing emotional fatigue.

 

The grief that I have been working through this season of Lent has cracked open my emotions and made me realize everything that I have been carrying.

 

And I think that this is what I need to pay more attention to when I go back to work in May – I tend to be aware of my physical and my mental state, but I need to be more aware of my emotional state, and do better (especially at the pacing part of his advice).  We are Emotional Athletes, and this is a marathon and not a sprint.

 

 

Spending some time today with Holy Week music

Lessons from Sabbatical - Week 5

If I had to pick a word for this week, it would probably be “spaciousness.” It feels like this was the first week when I really found the spaciousness that I had hoped to find in this Sabbatical. I had time to get everything done that needed to get done and that I wanted to do without feeling rushed or pressed for time – picking up my new car, exercising every day, getting enough sleep each night, cooking, music practice.

 

One of my explicit Sabbatical goals was around resuming old spiritual practices or exploring new practices. Confession time: in March 2020, when the pandemic turned the whole world upside down, one of the casualties was my usual spiritual practices. Even though I knew that I needed them more than ever, I couldn’t quiet my mind and spirit to be able to sit with them. And then as the initial chaos lessened, I was out of the routine. This was the week when I was able to resume them. (Though I have always had a cat on my lap during my morning prayer time – first Lily and then Paka. Nuru is in the room with me, but she prefers to watch me from the cat tree or windowsill rather than sitting on my lap.)

 

My challenge is going to be figuring out how to carry this spaciousness with me when I return to my church duties. I know that the things that I’m finding in this spaciousness – prayer, sleep, exercise – make me healthier overall, and I don’t want to lose them.

 

 

Nuru, supervising morning prayer

from her perch on the cat tree

Lessons from Sabbatical - Week 4

Grief, upon grief, upon grief.

 

Paka
April 1, 2007 – March 1, 2024

 

I adopted Paka from the Thunder Bay District Humane Society the summer after moving back to Canada from Tanzania. Lily (8 years old at the time) did better with another cat around, and since Ambrose had died while I was overseas, Paka joined our household once Lily had had a chance to make it her own.

 

Paka was the little grey kitten in a cage full of grey kittens who wouldn’t let me put her back into the cage.

 

She is probably the smartest cat I’ve ever been owned by. She taught me how to play fetch with her pompoms, but she never fell for the red dot of the laser pointer as she figured out right away that it was coming from the thing in my hand. She could open closet doors from the inside or the outside. Treats are reserved for an after-claw-trimming reward - usually by the time I finished trimming Nuru's claws, Paka would be sitting by the treat cupboard and I would trim her claws right there. In the pandemic, she discovered the joy of Zoom calls and livestreaming - I swear that she could hear when I pressed "go live" or "join call" on my phone or computer, and people on the other end learned to recognize her tail sticking straight up in the air as she jumped up on my lap.

 

 

She wasn’t a lap cat for the first half of her life, but sometime around her 8^th birthday she figured out that laps were a good place to be, and then she would jump up on my lap as soon as I sat down. In the last year, she has moved further up my body, and her favourite place became tucked right under my chin.

 

 

My cats generally don’t eat people-food, but I occasionally snuck her bits of salmon which she enjoyed. Nuru also taught her, in the past couple of years, that yoghurt is a good thing. Her bizarre human food preferences were for unsweetened grapefruit and porridge. It’s going to be hard to make myself my usual Sunday morning porridge tomorrow without her by my chair begging to lick out the bowl.

 

Paka lived in more provinces than most Canadians. She was born in Thunder Bay (ON), moved with me to Kenora (ON) for 8 months when I relocated temporarily for work. She moved half-way across the country with me to Dartmouth (NS) when I went back to school in 2014. She moved all the way across the country with me to Chetwynd (BC) for my internship, and then she moved all the way back across the country with me when I accepted my call here in Nerepis (NB).

 

 

She had been failing over the past year and a half or so, and her vet and I were on the same page with respect to no invasive tests or interventions for my old-lady cat.

 

Right from when she was a kitten, Paka liked to sleep under the covers with me, curled up behind my knees. On the hottest nights of summer, she still needed to be on the bed with me, but fortunately not under the covers – just reaching out to make sure she was touching me with one paw. As she got more frail, she found it harder to move around under the covers, but she still wanted to be near me (and unfortunately gave me some bad scratches in the past few months, crawling over my head in the middle of the night, which usually resulted in her being banished from the bedroom for the remainder of the night). In the past couple of months, she would only try to get up on the bed once a week or so.

 

Last week, the night before I flew to Ontario for the week, was one of those nights. She crawled up on the bed in the middle of the night, and eventually settled down in front of the other pillow, and we had a good cuddle even though I had to get up early the next morning to catch my flight.

 

 

When I got home late Thursday night, she was clearly telling me that it was time, and so Friday morning I called the vet’s office. They had an appointment at 11:30 (with my favourite vet in the practice, no less), and the vet affirmed what I already knew. Shortly before noon, with assistance from the vet, Paka fell asleep in my arms, tucked into her favourite spot under my chin.

 

When I was making my sabbatical goals, I didn’t predict that so much of my time would be spent processing grief.

 

I went home from the vet’s on Friday, had lunch, and changed my clothes to go to Catria’s funeral (my next door neighbour who died a couple of weeks ago). I sat in the back row of the local Catholic church and let myself cry.

 

I cried for Catria. I cried for Paka. I cried for Alison (a friend and colleague who died on Ash Wednesday). I cried for all of the people whose funerals I have conducted in the past 5 ½ years (most of them people I cared very deeply for).

 

It was strange but good to be at a funeral with no responsibilities other than to grieve. It was good to have permission to let my sadness out. And there was so much comfort in the funeral liturgy, even though it was from a tradition not my own. The reassurance of resurrection. The call of “come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Fr. David spoke words that my heart needed to hear on Friday afternoon, even though I was a snotty mess through all of it.

 

Nuru knows that something isn’t right. She sometimes wanders through the house meowing, as if she is looking for Paka. But we are both going to be OK. (And when the time is right, there will likely be another feline joining our household.)

 

 

Grief, upon grief, upon grief. And yet there is a time for everything (one of the other readings from Friday afternoon), and so I know that this season won’t last forever. Lent will continue to unfold into Good Friday, and suffering will be replaced by resurrection. But for now, this season seems to be a season of moving through grief.