Maundy Thursday

After Ash Wednesday (which opens Lent), Maundy Thursday (which closes Lent) is the day in the Christian Calendar with most meaning for me.  I honor the importance of the Big 3 Days (Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter) throughout the Christian world for they mark the major milestones of Christ’s life as a human. Yet, Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday mark major milestones of Christ’s life IN ME. 

 

I think of life as a journey, indeed a pilgrimage because it is a sacred. The roads are well traveled and offer companionship; so we travel with others and from time to change the company we keep. At the same time, we are each on our own pilgrimage; no one’s pilgrimage is like anyone else’s. From time to time on my pilgrimage, reality gets very clear and time pauses so that I feel the Cosmic Jesus in my being. 

 

I was raised in what Episcopalians call “Low Church.” “Low Church” congregations in the 1950’s restricted their attention to the Big 3 Days. I can remember knowing when it was Lent (Episcopalians do not say “Alleluia” in our prayers during Lent); I can’t remember ever going to an Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday service. I know for sure that we never had a foot washing service nor a Maundy Thursday Vigil. 

I had been attending All Saints’ Palo Alto about a year when I first heard of Vigil in an announcement requesting us to sign up to “keep watch” for an hour in the chapel over the night spanning Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. It was 1999; my mother had died only a few weeks before on Feb 22.  In the Chapel during my appointed hour (2-3am), I felt my mother’s warm presence.  In 2000, I signed up again. 

1999 had taken its toll on me.  The joyful highlight of the year had been my daughter Jennifer’s marriage.  But it had mostly been a year of death and dying.  I had lost my mother, Daniel’s father, my cat of 19 years and “Rocket.”  The research company I worked for had created a new genre of games for girls and had “spun out” a new little company to produce and market games and all kinds of stuff around a new girl hero called Rocket (think of Rocket as a cool alternative to Barbie).  The people who invested in the place where I worked also were the investors in Rocket’s company.  On Good Friday 1999, those investors closed Rocket Company.  Though I worked for the parent company, and thus did not lose my job, I felt a deep loss at the closing of the girls’ game company.  I had lost hope in the research company that was paying my salary and on which I had staked the meaning of my life.  It wasn’t the first time I’d felt betrayed by a corporation.  But this betrayal hit me not just as painful, but as a sign of a larger loss in my life.  Since 1992, the research company had been the means by which my life would have purpose.  We believed our work there was going to make the world a better place. That purpose provided structure and meaning to my life (and I think to the lives of many who worked there).  The death of Rocket was a signal that it wasn’t to be: we were not going to be able to create and market things that would have any effect much less that grand effect we had envisioned.  Rocket was our best shot at a our dream; the death of the dream I’m labeling “Rocket” here was the death of the dream of my life.  Looking back, I believe that some of the melodrama I felt about the loss of Rocket was really a cathecting of feelings consequent to losing Mom and Big Cat, then immediately turning attention to the last six month’s of Daniel’s father’s life.  Regardless of the cause or what was “really” going on, the direction of my career no longer made sense nor gave satisfaction to me.

By the time of Maundy Thursday, 2000, I knew that my work was impacting my health.  I was in almost continuous anxiety.  I did stupid little things with big bad consequences.  My work life had always been the most important element of my life (broad statement, but unfortunately true), and now I was swimming in a poison well.  I had to get out.  But the money was good.  And I was still unable to separate my ego from the operation of the company.  And so, I continued to go into work day after day, mostly miserable, and hating myself for not just leaving.  This was after all boom time in

Silicon Valley

.  Work was plentiful and signing bonuses big.    Everyday I knew it was time to go and everyday I did not resign.   

In the overnight Maundy Thursday Vigil of 2000, I begged God to please just help me leave.  I was calm when left the chapel at 4 am, and at peace feeling that God had heard me.  Soon after getting to work about 9 am, I learned that the investors were closing OUR company; this time I was out of a job. Even the president had been taken by surprise when the investors’ limousines rolled in to take over.  Another Good Friday massacre.  I was relieved and stunned.  Daniel says that God delivers on my Vigil requests faster than Federal Express: a wish made at 3 am is fulfilled before noon.

While Maundy Thursday 2000 has been my most dramatic encounter with God’s answering my prayer; every year has events beyond probability answered my prayers.  Daniel says he‘s not asking to censure what I pray for, but he wants a bit of advanced notice.

Maundy Thursday 2006 finds me sitting in the hospital in the midst of intense chemotherapy; my life is “hanging in the balance” to be cliché about it.  This is certainly no time to skip what I’ve come to call my “hour of power.” I scoped out the Hospital Chapel and determined that is would be a fine place for me to do an hours’ Vigil.  My question was what is my prayer?  When Daniel saw one of our wise professors, Ed Rodman, on Thursday, Ed observed that “God is not finished with Bonnie.”  As soon as I heard that I knew my prayer for the Vigil: “God, please do not be finished with me, if that is your will.”   I think that God liked that prayer. 

And God had a bit more for me than usual this year.  God, speaking me in a voice somewhat like Whoopi Goldberg’s, said that She has done enough things for me that I could have done for myself.  Year after year, she has moved the world to put me in situations that I claim to be too weak to put myself into.  She is “finished with closing a company to help me leave; finished with burning all my stuff so that I can get a “clean start,” etc. etc. etc.”   She says that at 62, I am old enough to steer my own boat and that She wants to hear no more of my whining “I want to, but I can’t.”  She knows perfectly well that I can do most of what I ask Her to do for me and that from now on, the ball is in my court.  She’d like to see me doing more on her team rather than whimping along the sidelines.

I left the Chapel this morning feeling light and empowered.  True, it is a bit intimidating for me to think that I might not get all those “beyond probability” movements of the world to serve me.  Yet, I like the notion that I can do what I desire to do.  I suspect this is going to be a very interesting year. (Bonnie years go from Good Friday to Good Friday.)

Comments

[Diane Schiano]

Happy Good Friday.
Blessed by Holy Saturday.
I pray you are well by Easter.
Thank you, Bonnie, I find so much in your writing.
Best to you,
-d