Holy Week, 2023
Holy Week has come and gone and I have to confess (no pun intended) that it ended almost literally with a whimper. I volunteered to come in the Monday evening after Palm Sunday in order to do the Intercession prayer. It was a simple, stripped down service adhering closely to the Book of Common Prayer and very much like Morning Prayer, held in the Little Chapel. Jamie gave the sermon and I learned a lot about him through it. I had no idea that he graduated with a bachelor in Religious Studies from Duke.
That was my last trip into Manhattan until Good Friday. Pale Male and I both observed how quickly the service, traditionally held in the afternoon, seemed now. It still begins at noon and ends three hours later. It just seems to go faster. I would have to go back in the archives to really figure out why. For the last couple of years, I've gotten a kick out of observing the looks on people's faces as they past the Stations of the Cross, recently illustrated with hand-painted scenes supplied by parishioners. I contributed two of them, Stations II, and VI.
Pale Male would join me later at Dive bar for a late brunch, but not before I'd had a couple of hard ciders while waiting for him. I wound up getting mildly tipsy as well as holding a painfully full bladder for the entire length of the ride home.
And that was it. I paused briefly before the darkened windows of Pearls, the erstwhile Chinese restaurant that was the scene of several Easter Vigil meals back in the day. No one thought it would ever close. But it has. I couldn't bring myself to come back into the city the rest of the weekend.
That was my last trip into Manhattan until Good Friday. Pale Male and I both observed how quickly the service, traditionally held in the afternoon, seemed now. It still begins at noon and ends three hours later. It just seems to go faster. I would have to go back in the archives to really figure out why. For the last couple of years, I've gotten a kick out of observing the looks on people's faces as they past the Stations of the Cross, recently illustrated with hand-painted scenes supplied by parishioners. I contributed two of them, Stations II, and VI.
Pale Male would join me later at Dive bar for a late brunch, but not before I'd had a couple of hard ciders while waiting for him. I wound up getting mildly tipsy as well as holding a painfully full bladder for the entire length of the ride home.
And that was it. I paused briefly before the darkened windows of Pearls, the erstwhile Chinese restaurant that was the scene of several Easter Vigil meals back in the day. No one thought it would ever close. But it has. I couldn't bring myself to come back into the city the rest of the weekend.