Weekly Words for the Journey

To My Beloved PBBC Community

As we journey through this Holy Week, know that I am holding each of you in my heart, and I am lifting all of you in my prayers. I share with you this poem written by my daughter, Heidi, as she is holed up in her New Haven apartment. May her words, along with God’s Spirit, bind us together in these days of darkness…

A Poem by Heidi Butler

As busy school months give way to isolated learning
Or more accurately, guilt of not accomplishing and falling behind
And not having the energy to care
As busily preparing clergy and church leaders
Excited for their yearly retelling of the church’s origin story
Find themselves in eerily empty sanctuaries
Having been reminded we are dust, yet waiting ever longer for the Hallelujahs and Hosannas that
wouldn’t come this year
As ritual foot washing is replaced by vigorous hand washing
And a communal meal of bread and wine
Becomes yet another meal scrounged from what is in the pantry
Or what remains on bare supermarket shelves
Eaten at the table that is now office and classroom and theatre and pew
As we wait in uncertainty
How much longer?
When will this end?
Will it?
What will we lose in the process?
Though it feels so different, we recreate daily the dark days of the early disciples
Who had seen death, had lost a friend, had had their movement disrupted and their plans cancelled
And mourned in secret
Isolated.
They did not know where to turn
Or what to do
Or how to go on
Or if they should go on.
They could not know
Separate and alone
That God had not yet finished the story
And Sunday would come.

A Blessed Easter to all of our members, friends and families…

With love, with gratitude, and with hope,
Pastor Claudine

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