All Hallow's Eve

Happy Halloween from a sunny, windy corner of Northeast. It's a quiet, lazy Sunday afternoon. Sara's studying, Leo's watching football. It feels like a holiday. The kind where you lay around and call family. Eat good food. I'm sitting in the kitchen looking out at the backyard. Sara and I went to church together this morning. The only prescheduled must do for our time together. Communion, singing, hand holding, prayers of the people, good groan worthy message, coffee hour meeting people that have become a part of Sara's community here. The church is a little Episcopal church in Provincetown right on the bay "where the land, the sea, and the sacred meet."

St. Mary's and Liberation's worship services don't look much alike, but a radically inclusive Spirit is alive and well in both places. St. Mary's is an older crowd, mostly retired, mostly white and being Episcopalian is pretty "high church." By the end of communion I was crying after witnessing so much kindness in that little place. There's a time in the liturgy every week for people celebrating birthdays and anniversaries to come up to receive a blessing. Two men with matching rings on their fingers I'd guess in their 60's stood up and whispered to the white haired retired priest "we're not officially married, but we're going to receive the blessing." And they did. No big fuss.

A woman stood up during announcements - "Soup Kitchen starts in November, St. Mary's has the third Sunday of every month and we're hosting a food pantry again this year. Please remember the homeless within our community."

They serve wine and grape juice during communion. I assume in support of people in recovery and whether or not that's the intention it does make the elements more accessible to everyone. That means a lot to me. I haven't been to a Catholic or Episcopal service in Seattle that does that. No big fuss.

A woman sitting in the pew in front of us rolled an oxygen tank in with her and didn't get up for communion. Another woman came over to her and anointed her with a hand on her head whispering in her ear, the woman with the oxygen tank leaning in.

Followed by the priest and a Eucharistic minister offering communion to her at her pew. Again, no big fuss.

All just a part of the weekly liturgy in their community, the living Word, the works of the people.

I want to be that kind. I want to be that present. I want to be that aware and that open to the people around me. To go to where the need is and not wait for it to come to me. To approach the table acknowledging my own needs.

Blessing, healing, serving, receiving. Those are my deepest desires. I pray this can be my work as well as my life.

Poking around on wikipedia today about Halloween and as a result reading about the Celtic celebration Samhain. "Summer's end" or the end of the lighter half of the year. Presumably this time of year is a time when the veil is thin between the seen and the unseen, the living and the dead. The Cape during the off season feels like a soft place, maybe a thin place. Most certainly a quiet place. A still place even with the wind.

All Saints' Day tomorrow, followed by All Souls Day and Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos). Makes me think of R. It's his favorite time of year and not just for the zombies. I miss him. Thinking of my grandparents and my friend Trudy who is keeping vigil with her mother Gertrude.

I downloaded Vince Gauraldi's Great Pumpkin Waltz this afternoon and have been listening to it on repeat. My sister, Julia, and I made a trip to Gordon Skagit Farms a couple weeks ago and it was amazing and pretty simple - squash and pumpkins, apple and cider. Jess read about it on Sarah's blog and wrote me months ago saying let's get this on the calendar. Walking around I kept waiting to turn the corner around the barn and run into Charlie Brown under the ominous sky. Jess and I kept saying "wouldn't Mom just die here?" When I called home this afternoon she was vacuuming and dusting "getting ready for Halloween." My mom has the gift of celebration and decoration for sure.

Thankful for how I was raised with the costumes and the pumpkins, the trick or treating and the cemeteries. Thankful for all I'm continuing to learn about various traditions and cultures, including my own. Our roots are deep and interwined.

I love being here. Whatever time of year, wherever we are, being with Sara is always a thin place, a soft place for me.