Too Long in Exile
Church today - it's been far too long. I got there in time for the Gospel reading, which was pretty good considering that every bus and train was late today. I was amazed at how much a church can feel like a home - more like home than one's own house and bed. I guess I've really missed going to church.
There was a modified panikhida service (prayers for the dead) for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I cried a little, mostly because I was thinking of Uncle Bobby. I unconsciously (but appropriately) turned to the icon of St. Pantaleimon and prayed about whether the right choice was made. We all thought chemo was the right choice, yet the chemo killed him. He would have died of the leukemia, so didn't we have to try? Or at least, didn't we have a right to try? He died in all the comfort anyone could give - he mostly slept those last few days, in a haze of pain medications and antibiotics. When it was clear that his organs were shutting down, all but the pain treatments were stopped. That's doing as well as we could, right? I know the choice was ultimately E.'s, but all of the close relatives, myself included, thought the course of treatment was sensible. Still, one second-guesses oneself a lot, wondering if the outcome could have been any different.
I was glad to see big signs in the parish hall and out on the lawn advertising the 9/11 Interfaith Unity Walk. It's the church's role to give members more opportunities to get to know and love all other people.
The sermon was also nice. It was given by Fr. M., who is a missionary and has just returned from Outer Nowhere in the Arctic Circle. He talked about God loving the world and wanting to save all of it. Great stuff. He normally preaches very well, and I enjoy hearing him. He also has a goodly crop of children, mostly daughters, who are very sweet. One of them, who is about ten or eleven years old, contributed a plastic baggie she wasn't using so I could take some antidoron home to papertigers.
papertigers has been trying to get me to go back to church for weeks, and I guess she is right.
There was a modified panikhida service (prayers for the dead) for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I cried a little, mostly because I was thinking of Uncle Bobby. I unconsciously (but appropriately) turned to the icon of St. Pantaleimon and prayed about whether the right choice was made. We all thought chemo was the right choice, yet the chemo killed him. He would have died of the leukemia, so didn't we have to try? Or at least, didn't we have a right to try? He died in all the comfort anyone could give - he mostly slept those last few days, in a haze of pain medications and antibiotics. When it was clear that his organs were shutting down, all but the pain treatments were stopped. That's doing as well as we could, right? I know the choice was ultimately E.'s, but all of the close relatives, myself included, thought the course of treatment was sensible. Still, one second-guesses oneself a lot, wondering if the outcome could have been any different.
I was glad to see big signs in the parish hall and out on the lawn advertising the 9/11 Interfaith Unity Walk. It's the church's role to give members more opportunities to get to know and love all other people.
The sermon was also nice. It was given by Fr. M., who is a missionary and has just returned from Outer Nowhere in the Arctic Circle. He talked about God loving the world and wanting to save all of it. Great stuff. He normally preaches very well, and I enjoy hearing him. He also has a goodly crop of children, mostly daughters, who are very sweet. One of them, who is about ten or eleven years old, contributed a plastic baggie she wasn't using so I could take some antidoron home to papertigers.
papertigers has been trying to get me to go back to church for weeks, and I guess she is right.