Holy Moly Week

I don't even remember when I took this photo. Last week sometime. But I think we're into our third snowfall since then because there are six or so inches of soft March snow on the ground right now.
So that's where I go -- into the snow -- when I need a break from the computer.
It's Holy Week for Christian churches and in providing pulpit supply for several local United Churches, I'm experiencing the busyness of this week, which runs from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, for the first time from a minister's point of view.
It's not doing the extra services that makes this week so busy; it's the work of creating them and organizing readers and the choir and extras, like nails and -- crap, I still have to do up the hidden messages for the Easter eggs!
See? Yet again, I come to a greater appreciation for the job that ministers have. Because this is the job part, the compiling of services and writing of messages; the vocation part of being a minister -- the call to guide people along a path of faith, through a spiritual journey -- is what makes the job part easier.
Perhaps "easier" isn't the right word; it makes the job rewarding, it makes the call undeniable.
I'm enjoying this work, as fraught as it is with the pressure of being a minor (and "unqualified") leader of those spiritual journeys.

At the same time, my editor at Nimbus emailed with comments about the graphics for the book and also with a request to tweak the subtitle; they want the name of the province included in it. And this, my friends, is why I know better than to read work-related emails after supper!
As soon as I'd closed my book and shut off the light, part of my regular bedtime routine, one that usually leads -- much to the annoyance of my husband -- to me falling asleep within ten minutes, my brain said, "Well, NOW we can get on with the business of thinking up subtitles!" So as my husband fell asleep, I was scribbling away on my bedside notepaper.

It may not seem that there is a unifying thread between these two jobs -- being a worship leader and being a book writer -- but for me there is: the creation of ideas that I need to communicate to others in order for them to have something significant to think about. Getting the words of a prayer to say exactly what needs to be heard or coming up with the perfect title for an essay about roadkill (um, yes, that's for the book) means every day I sit at my desk and do the work I'm meant to do.

I came THISCLOSE to signing up for a Master of Divinity degree -- the closest I've come in twenty years of making inquiries, this being the third time  -- but again, the answer was the same as it was when I was 12: Keep writing. My ideas can reach more people through books than they can through rural churches.