Friday Five: Holy, Holy Week, Batman!

This week's Friday Five is brought to us by the number 30 and the letter R, for Reverend Mother that is.

Well, the Clergy Superbowl is almost upon us, and so, I offer up this Friday Five (with apologies for the irreverent title): (Reverend Mother...there is no such thing as an irreverent title...but then again I have been called the irreverent Reverend.)

1. Will this Sunday be Palms only, Passion only, or hyphenated? Oh this Sunday is all about hyphen. It is Passion-Palm Sunday at the VA Medical Center in Saint Cloud, MN. There will be a procession with palms and a blessing of palms but we will be reading and reflecting on the Passion story. The only thing I'm really going to miss is giving palms to the kids and watching them hit each other with them. It always amuses me.

2. Maundy Thursday Footwashing: Discuss. Alas, there will be no footwashing. I actually enjoy this very much because it reminds me to be humble. It reminds me that I am here to serve God and others. I always think of footwashing as the Christian way of saying, "Namaste." It's how I say to others that I see God's presence in your life and how others say that to me. I know that some people think it's gross but it has a significant personal impact for me.

3. Share a particularly meaningful Good Friday worship experience. You mean they are not all particularly meaningful? Seriously though, one that holds a great deal of meaning for me happened when I was 22ish. I was still attending a Catholic Church in Saint Paul, this was before I became Protestant, and I has already began to discern my own call to ministry with the help of a few pastoral mentors. I was sitting in service and listening to reading and had this feeling. I'm sure that John Wesley would call it a "stirring of the heart" or something like that but I knew in that moment that going to grad school for anthropology was the wrong path and that I had to go to seminary. It made no sense, it was completely irrational but God was asking me to follow faith and I followed. I'm still following in hopes that someday I'll know where I'm going.

4. Easter Sunrise Services--choose one:a) "Resurrection tradition par excellence!"b) "Eh. As long as it's sunrise with coffee, I can live with it."c) "[Yawn] Can't Jesus stay in the tomb just five more minutes, Mom?!?" I choose D...all of the above. I enjoy Easter Sunrise Service but I have to have coffee present. I know that rising from the dead and all took a lot of energy and I should have enough to at least go and be apart of the service but lets be honest...if Jesus had Starbucks in his time he would have had a Venti Soy Two Splenda No Foam Latte before getting up too. :) OK...so on rainy and cold Easter Sunrise Services it's harder to enjoy them and to want to be apart of them but there is something about being up that early in the morning and seeing the sun come up that creates this sense of awe and wonder in me. God really is great!

5. Complete this sentence: It just isn't Easter without...Bonus: Any Easter Vigil aficionados out there? Please share. Confession. It's the raging Roman Catholic still in me. I still need to go to a service of confession before I can really enjoy Easter. I have this need to tell God all of the things that I forget to say. I know that I'm strange but I enjoy being that way.