petard.us

I have experienced some good lightening of mood. I am feeling more energetic and happy. I think getting to go to church has done this. Last Sunday I really felt like a participant. My prayer in the Eucharist was where it should be. Now I need to find a way to meet people. I am wondering if and when adult ed might happen. there doesn’t seem to be a coffee hour after the 11 o clock. there is a space of time between the 8.30 and the 11. Sunday School happens then. so I wonder what the adults do. I will have to ask.

At the moment I am less then my best. My sciatica started up again yesterday. I am hobbling about a bit but relatively ok except when sitting and trying to shift my position. But I am not much more depressed by it.

I have just started reading _Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy_ by Barbara Ehrenreich. The introduction really speaks of our Western rational squashing of the ecstatic, from the views of anthropologists and psychologists and psychoanalysts. I have some experience of the ecstatic from my rock days, especially with the Grateful Dead. I also remember going to the festival at the local Greek church in St Louis. I wound up drinking a some beer and getting into the famous Greek line dance, a la Zorba the Greek. It went on for hours, til very early in the morning. I drank a huge amount of beer, but being in August I sweated it all right back out. I was not sick or much hung over the next day. And it all seemed to just keep happening, perhaps best thought of as flow. And I found energy I didn’t know I had. Nor at any point did I feel really drunk, just pleasantly conscious. Makes me wonder how much we have lost. The book will inform me in detail.

April 9, 2007: Easter Monday

Well I am hooked up with a church again. I went to Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil at my local parish. I had visited there some while back and found it felt unwelcoming. there has been a complete change and turn around. All new clergy, including an Interim. And someone I knew in the Diocese of Newark, though I think he doesn’t much remember me.

I guess I should feel ecstatic to have made the connection, but actually I have been feeling a bit let down. Inevitable with so much hanging on this. I am not out to many people as a priest. What’s the point so far. What I should do is write to the Bishop of NC with a copy to the local Bishop, making myself available somehow.

Nevertheless, it does feel good to be back in the church again, so right. And this is a church I can actually walk to, a 45 minute walk. I did it last Friday and Saturday, and got a ride home with the priest I knew in New Jersey. On Sundays I have a ride to and from.