I saw a wonderful, sensitively written and acted piece of theatre today and I owe a bundle of thanks to Judy, who sat beside me while I cried.
The Busy World Is Hushed
Sometimes synchronicity hits me like a punch in the stomach (though I did see it coming when I got invited to see this play). Winded, but immensely grateful for the opportunity to see it, it's hit me today on so many levels that I walked, six kilometres, home, to think it through.
The story, about an Episcopalian minister and her gay son, showing each other up in the offset of a man who's father is dying, hit chords within me, not only because part of the premise of the story is the ministers' exposition of the 'Lost Coptic Gospels' (think Nag Hammadi), not only because of the question of whether 'we are only whole while ever we are in relationship', not only because I completely identified with her dilletante son Thomas who refused to place any stakes in the ground but mostly because of her reasoning, her jealousy, of those who get to go to church on Sunday for an hour and get a satisfactory fill of spirit in that small allocation of their time. Those for whom spirit is an exoteric connection, that only happens once a week, at largely the responsibility of someone else (the minister).
I wish. The short answers have never satisfied my hunger to know. And so the chase continues...
So the Vespers prayer from which the title comes goes like this:
May he support us all the day long,
till the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed
and the fever of life is over and our work is done.
Then in Your mercy Lord
grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest,
and peace at last with you, Amen.
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