This past Thursday, September 19, was my 19th anniversary of ordination as a priest. It's also the feast day of St Michael and All Angels. At the usual Taize prayer service that evening, I had a most beautiful experience that is so hard to put into words.
This is simply an awkward attempt.
Sitting in the chapel with about twenty people, no need to think about what my hands are doing 'cos the music is happening, the guitar is playing and my hands, my body, my mind, my spirit
can do it, or be it, without thinking, it just happens, I know the music, my fingers do the work without needing me to look, the words and music like part of my being, as natural and easy as breathing, my body, memory in the body, the fingers, the singing, the voice, along with the person playing flute beside me, we are praying the music not playing it, it happens and moves without interruption, it all just flows in one peaceful rhythm that we all know so well as we pray through the hour in song, music, prayers, reading and silence.
Tonight, an incessant deep kernel of joy that infuses my heart, my soul, I hear, or feel or simply know the angels are there too and they are smiling, it is impossible to capture in words, a mystical sense of being peacefully held in the peace of God, in the heart of God.
A sense of bilocation across the globe and across the years, a sense of people present then to witness the joy, present now, who knows how,sharing the joy and that moment that changed the face of our church forever, changed me forever, who I always was connected with priestly actions I felt I'd been doing since I was born yet did for the first time, in my being a priest, in who I am a priest, I am a priest forever, a very human priest, simply trying to live faithfully to the call to follow, to trust no matter what, to love, to live.
