So, we are not having ThPM tonight. I am just too damn sick. I had this little break from my migraines, and I got all happy. But this month I’ve had them non stop for almost two weeks. Chemo didn’t help. Pills don’t help. Acupuncture, nope. If I could do yoga 24 hours a day, I think I’d be okay.

I’m losing the emotional battle right now.

I had this whole lovely plan for ThPm. First, we were going to read an awesome essay on Epiphany. Maybe “Only a Rumor” by Soren Kierkegaard in Watch for the Light, or maybe “Betty’s Manger Scene Collection” by Debbie Blue in Sensual Orthodoxy. Then we were going to have a time of silence (one of the practices we’ve been meaning to practice) and do one of those new-years-y things where you look back, and then cast your hope forward. We were going to bring journals, and date books, and photo albums to help us remember. We were going to make stars to help us move forward….

Lily Lewin and her hubby Rob were in town last weekend and she suggested that we theme our Epiphany celebration around the star. “How are you going to follow the star this year? Where do you think the star is taking you?” I dug that. My favorite holiday decoration this year has been this paper star that Lisa Koontz helped Eden make in Sunday School (back when we went to Sunday School) when Eden was…two maybe? I hung it in the widow that is over the kitchen sink. (I spend a lot of time there.) I like it so much, this little pretty thing. So this morning, when I still thought I could play hostess to the evening, I cut out a bunch of these stars and stuck them on our tree. The idea was that the tribe could each make one when they were done with their little experiment with silence. And maybe on the back we could write something about the star we want to follow, and who hung it there, and where we suspect it might be going this year. And then everybody could go stick them over their kitchen sink, or on their dash board, or wherever.

But as silly and lovely as that seems, I’m just not up for it. I can’t hostess when I’m this sick. I can’t cultivate anyone’s soul. Can’t dance in the overlap. Can’t breathe on God active moments. I can only moan. You know that scene in When Harry Met Sally where they are talking to each other on the phone and watching Casablanca on TV from their respective beds? When the movie is done Harry says something like “I think I’ll just sit here and moan.” And he starts moaning intermittedly, flopping the remote control from side to side while he does so. I’m sort of in that space. So it would be totally false for me to play hostess/cultivator/abbess tonight. And I feel like, as a community, we’ve made a commitment to not do that “Christianly” thing where we put on the stiff upper lip, and the plaster of paris smile and just grin and bear it because, doggoneit, “church” has to happen!

I think about all the times my pastors have preached tired, or sick, or downright in need of surgery, and I wish it hadn’t been that way. I wish our churches could have said, “Hey, go lie down. Don’t be here today. We like you, and you’re smart and everything, but we’ll survive without a sermon. Don’t put your best face forward. Show us your real face, and we won’t mind. We won’t grump or threaten your salary, or complain about how we didn’t get “fed” or “filled up” this week. In fact, we’ll bring you dinner!”

People from my (extended) tribe offered to bring me dinner. Two of ‘em. I could cry! (Thanks Lynette and Jennifer. Kiss. Kiss.)

I wish I would have lived like that towards these pastors I’ve loved.

Anyway, enough rambling. I just wanted to get this stuff down. To document my dream for epiphany…and to remind myself to be real and to be flawed and to be a regular human being and not a super Christian (God, how I want to shed all that stuff!)…and I guess to say, in my twisted non-punctuated run-on way –“Thank You”—to those pastors I’ve helped to burn out, and to wish them the best on their healing way.