It's 2 A.M. and I've been thinking...

Sounds like a Country & Western song right? Well. it was 13 years ago at about this time of the night when I heard the words, "You won't survive." Pretty dramatic. But made all the more so given the context. I was flat on my back, on a gurney, looking up at a gloved and masked surgeon. He had just told me how he was going to open my sternum and replace the part of my aorta that had just ruptured. Even now, reading these words on the screen as I type, it is a surreal concept to think that it happened. The concept of opening a human chest to replace part of a heart with some Gore-Tex and a hunk of plastic and carbon fiber... The thought that I survived this... I've pictured the anatomy. I've run through the process in my head. I know the biology of this event. But it still makes no sense. It shouldn't have happened this way. I really should not be alive...

As I take a sip of my tea (Yes Mom, It's Decaf.) and consider where this post is going next, i re-read the first paragraph and my internal editor says: "My. Aren't we being melodramatic and self indulgent tonight." Well, editor. Shut up. I've earned it.

Everyone always asks. "What are you doing for Halloween?" It's as reflexive as asking that about New Years Eve. My answer has always been "Hiding under my bed!" But not this year.

I put up a post a few days ago about getting a collar and finally committing to the ordination process. Well, today, on the anniversary of my death. (sorry editor, I know that comment is melodramatic and self indulgent but I'm a little too amused with myself for writing it to leave it out.) Anyway, on this day where I've always thought about the past, I took a giant step in a very strange and new direction. I wore a collar through the streets of the city that has become my adulthood home. I went to the church. I served the Eucharist. I prayed over people, laying my hands on them. Just two years ago I wasn't even going to church. Today I'm working toward becoming the church's ordained representative. I'm helping people, through prayer and a 2000 year old ritual to get closer to God and "the community of Saints" All of this, on the day of my death. All of this on All Hallows Eve, the night before the celebration and remembrance of the souls who have gone before us. All of this on Samhainn, the Celtic festival of the dead. All of these days celebrate transition. A transition between phases of life and changes of season. Today has always been a day of transition for me. Today I added another.

I guess I could rattle on here and make some profound theological comment about serving communion, the Eucharist, the ritual celebrating Jesus' ressurection as my first act as clergy, and doing it on the day that I 'cheated death" (How's THAT for a melodramatic flourish.). Prehaps if I really worked at it I could figure out someway to link Halloween/Samhain/All Saints Day , my first communion as clergy (Which, truth be told, was actually almost a month ago. Today was the second, although it was my first day in a collar.) and the anniversary of my surgery. I could link all these rhetorically, then point out that it is three elements. Three, a triangle, the architecturally perfect number, the number of the Trinity. I could point out how this coming together of elements in this number of strength mirrors how strongly I feel that this is the right path. I could do all of this, but, my tea is cold, my bed is warm with Lovely Wife Mo sleeping peacefully in it, and it is now 3:15 A.M and I've stopped thinking...