In Which I Lock Myself Out of the House

We all went to church yesterday, neglecting, absurdly, to bring any house keys along with us, or leave a way for ourselves to get back in when it would have been time to come home.

Upon discovering this tragedy, I stood in the church office flapping hysterically, texting and freaking out. Because, here’s the thing. It’s not just that we would all eventually needed to come home when church was over. No, rather, because we live right next to the church, I am often in the way of running over to get things I forgot, to avail myself of my own motor vehicle to pick people up or run to the store, to turn down my pork roast, to rummage around in my pantry for something to eat that isn’t laden with flour and happiness. I pop home, often, because it is literally right there.

And I had arranged in my own mind, yesterday, to pop home at least twice, for the critical convenience of the car, which would relay me two places. I should stop this now and just do a day in the life, except that by the time I got to 9am, you would be tired, and so would I, trying to relive it.

Fret not thyself because of evil doers, or for any other reason. We all got in. Turns out Good Shepherd is possessed of people with sense and know how. And I’ll be going to get another key made for one of my doors very soon so that this can hopefully Never Occur Again.

There’s a saying, that I can’t get quite right in the phrasing, that I often heard in my childhood, mournfully articulated, in the midst of exasperation and vexatiously absurd mishap.

Those who don’t think with their heads run with their feet.

That’s the way I remember it, but I’m sure it could be more elegantly expressed.

More often than not, Iam  running with my feet, so you can draw your own conclusions about my head. And all the time, I feel like this is a bad thing. I should get myself together. I should be cool as a cucumber with all my ducks in a row. I shouldn’t be going back and forth and back and forth, forgetting, remembering, running to catch up. Every Sunday I run my legs off. My series of laps through the church and into my back garden are going to wear holes in the tile and that will be expensive. I should pause, and order my steps, and get my head into the driver’s seat.

But on Easter Sunday, as I sat exhausted in my pew after having done All The Things, willing myself not to become so restful there that I would fall asleep, the reality of that First Easter harkened itself to me in a new way.

All those women, and Peter and John, and the two on the road to Emmaus, what did they spend the entire day doing? That’s right. Having not thought with their heads over the previous three years or even during Passion Week, they ran with their feet. So much running on resurrection Sunday. The women go to the tomb in the dark, Mary Magdalene gets their first, freaks out, runs back to the disciples, Peter and John leap up and run to the tomb, she follows them and stops in the garden to have a good cry, the women get there at some point and freak out, then they meet Jesus and Mary Magdalene meets Jesus and they all go back into the city where they aren’t believed, then probably various parties of disciples go check out the tomb, and then the two going to Emmaus go all the way there only to turn around and run back. It’s a catalogue of people running around. When you line all the accounts up, and number all the trips and steps, you might be very tired thinking about it all.

And here I am, two thousand years later, recapitulating that morning over and over. It’s not that we gather once a week to remember the nice things that Jesus said and did, to trudge through the morning because that’s what we’ve always done, the first day of the week is promised to us as the continual, over and over again feast of Christ’s victory over death. We don’t meet on Good Friday, even though, believe me, lots of Sunday’s feel like Good Friday, we meet on Sunday because that’s when Jesus walked out of the grave. And because he walked out, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, he promised to be with us in a peculiar way when we gather together in his name. There we all are, standing around drinking coffee and fussing about the difficulties of life, not in an upper room but in the parish hall, me running my laps because I don’t have my head together, and there Jesus is also. He can be met in the midst of our hysteria, in our boredom, in the pew, downstairs, or even sprawled out on the Sunday school floor. And every time, especially if you are not really paying attention, you will be shocked and surprised to find out that he is there, and that he is paying attention to you.

So I am comforted, even though I still have every intention of becoming a better and more organized person, but first going to get that key.