It’s Holy Week.  You might think I’d be eager to finally reach Pascha and go back to eating “real food” and all that, but I feel like I need more time.  Fr. M suggested yesterday that we try to exceed our usual Holy Week attendance, but I’m going to do the opposite (what is the opposite of exceed?)  Going to school took up all of my vacation days this year (and that little trip to California in the fall!) AND I’ve managed to use up all my sick days (thanks, stomach flu) so my only option is to ask for unpaid time off.  And more than a third of my workgroup was recently fired or took a medical leave.  So.  If I’m lucky, I’ll get one night off this week.  Oh, the old “it’s a religious holiday” card.  I’ve often wondered what would happen if I tried to use that card for every feast of the year.  I’d miss an awful lot of work, for sure.  One year we ought to have all the services in the middle of the day, the benefit of those that work odd hours.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to come and rant.  I meant to come and talk about better things, like how Holy Week immediately throws you into a different mindset.  Each year it feels like you’re slipping into a groove, overlapping all of the previous years and adding on to them.  Which is appropriate since the feasts are supposed to be timeless – we sing everything in the present tense, as though we are present at the original feast.  As though we are living through the events, not commemorating them.  Which I love.  Last night at the Bridegroom matins, it turned into almost a feeling of deja-vu.

I mean this in a spiritual sense as well as in the way I crack up over the same things every year.  There’s one line that goes “O prosper Thou our handiwork,” and I think I had the same reaction last year – that would make a great name for a handicraft business.  A yarn store.  An etsy shop.  Wouldn’t it?  It’s like the benediction for knitters everywhere.  It has now replaced snippets of the music from Sweeney Tood as the thing stuck in my head.

On to books: I finally finished Elijah of Buxton (the end had me in tears, after not really getting into the book for a while) and I need to write up a little review.  I’m listening to The Subtle Knife in the car and was WAY too entertained by the reference to Plato and shadows on the wall of the cave.  It’s moments like that when I truly realize what a dork I am.  Also, I started Children of God, after holding off for several weeks.  I’m afraid of getting sucked back in – we’ll see how I do this time.

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