the Road goes ever on

July 12: The Lord's Day

I head into the District, with hopes of attending the 8:00 Mass at Ascension and St. Agnes on New York Avenue. It is a fine Anglo-Catholic parish which I know from a previous visit, easily recognizable by its Episcopal Red door. But today, I can find no place to park.

I move on, aiming to follow US 50 downtown by the monuments to Lincoln and Washington, and across the Potomac into Virginia, but I soon find myself on Massachusetts Ave. NW instead, in the embassy district. Approaching Wisconsin Avenue, I see an imposing pseudo-Gothic building on the right; it proves to be the National Cathedral. “This will do,” I tell myself, and I easily find a parking space on Wisconsin near St. Alban's Church, the parish church that was there long before the Cathedral. I check the sign for service times at St. Alban's and note that I am late for one, early for the next, so I wander over to the Cathedral, intending to look around for a half-hour or so and go back to St. Alban's. I am put off by the notice of a $10 admission fee and almost turn back, but I also see that I could make it to their early service without being impossibly late, and I find upon entry that the $10 fee does not apply to Sunday worshippers.

The service is downstairs in the Bethlehem Chapel, a crypt-like room that seats about two hundred and is on this day about half full. To my delight, it is Rite One, with Eastward celebration (that is, the Celebrant joins the people in facing east, toward Jerusalem that is and that shall be). It is a solid and dignified Low Church liturgy with no bells, no kneeling or crossing of oneself. I am glad that I am here, rather than upstairs in the main church for the 10:00 service. As I depart (going through the upstairs nave) I listen briefly to the visiting choir and organist who are completing their preparations.

The authorities have supplanted the handsome high altar, barely visible in the distance, with a nondescript (but large) table on what looks to be a platform extending out into the crossing. Behind the table (which I prefer not to dignify by calling it an altar), the choir is seated on risers which run horizontally in front of the choir screen, mostly obscuring what is beyond. The real Altar and divided Choir are blocked off. Perhaps they open it up during the week for the tourists.

July 13-14: Monday and Tuesday

Having prayed at the graves of my father and mother on Sunday late and Monday early, I head westward for Iowa and what is now my home. It is a road I have often travelled and described on other occasions, a final opportunity for solitude and prayer.

One of my goals for the Camino was to form the habit of praying the Little Offices. I have come to where I do reasonably well with Matins and Evensong and Compline. I silently pray a Little Office upon first waking, before rising from bed; I described it towards the end of this essay.

But I have never managed to say the Noontime office regularly, nor the other Little Hours of the day, Terce and None. I am most often “too busy,” rushing from one task to the next. What a miserable excuse! These offices take five minutes or less, and I easily waste that much time every day. More: I suspect that were I to interpose them between tasks, I would no longer find myself to be rushing.

As a beginning, I determined to make them a part of my routine for the Camino. Whenever I stopped the car for a break, which was every hour or two, I stretched, said the Office with an eight-verse section of Psalm 119, a New Testament verse chosen pretty much at random, and a Collect, then did other things. If it was a fuel stop, I attended to that, moved the car, then stretched and prayed. After a while it did become habit, and I worked all the way through Psalm 119.

Afterword: July 15 and following

I arrived home Tuesday evening. Wednesday was a busy day of grocery shopping, errands, sorting ten days of mail and paying bills, washing the Toyota. And Thursday found me back at the church. I had come home early to begin work on a Beethoven transcription for Saturday's funeral, and it proved that I needed every bit of these three days to prepare it, along with the other music for Saturday and Sunday. But I did not feel like work, nor did I work efficiently – and that dratted time log will indicate it, with too many and too lengthy breaks.

Still, I have managed to continue with the Little Offices on Wednesday and the days back at the church. Every practice break this week, I stretch, use the bathroom, say the Office. Then back to the organ. If I can continue with this, it will be well, even if I do not succeed in carrying the pattern forward into office work (of which I have done little this week). Here too it would do me good to take better breaks – stretch, say the Office – instead of the pattern I fall into when I am stressed, which tends to involve more chocolate than is good for me.

The test will come when I have my next normal Tuesday, with its staff meeting and most often a list of Must Do Right Now tasks coming out of it, tasks that typically take the rest of the day. Can I insert a Little Office between the staff meeting and the first of these tasks? Can they not wait even five minutes?

For the Camino continues. The Toyota has done its part, taking me some 2500 miles, but the Road still lies ahead, its End glimpsed rarely and then only through the mists, dimly. And the Offices are one of the ways in which we catch these glimpses.

Although my time log is ugly, I have on the whole worked the balance of this week and the weekend with a better spirit and a greater awareness of the One who walks with us, telling us of Himself in the Scriptures and the faces of the people we meet. That is not something that can be measured on a sheet of fifteen-minute intervals.


Next up: the RSCM Course. I go to it this year with more worries than usual, or perhaps hopes more than worries, that our new choristers coming to their first Course will prosper, and that my friends back home will find rest from their labors and stresses.

I am grateful that I can entrust these young people, so precious to me, to the likes of Weezer and Michael and Eddie and Caitlin and Jennifer – and now Mike and Jenna. And Debra and Debbie and Kristin. And I am glad that, Lord willing, I will see these my friends tomorrow and sing with them.