Dear Friends of the Egg,
This is the time of year when a parish pastor's life is very much like driving a Formula 1 car through a long, dark tunnel at top speed.
Lent is, for most of us, a great deal of work, not the least of which is the preparation for Holy Week and Easter. The goal is clear, and closer than it seems, but to change course even a little bit -- sometimes, even to divert one's attention from the road for a moment -- is to invite disaster.
Of course, an F-1 driver doesn't have to think about people who are ill or dying or dead, or inconsiderately being born, nor about councils and committees and even an ELCA Malaria Initiative executive who all insist on meeting during Holy Week, or on any of the million other routine matters that, in a rightly-ordered world, would be suspended until a week or two past Easter. Not to mention income taxes, due the day of the Vigil. So pastoring this time of year is more like driving that race car through the tunnel while juggling pie pans on broomsticks and singing "O Susanna."
It's busy. That's all we're saying here. It's a frantic, exciting, joyful time to be a servant of the servants of God.
And yet, astonishingly, the world keeps turning. Bad prayers continue to be published, ugly vestments to be worn; the President of the United States continues to lie like an Oriental carpet, and Congress continues to do nothing in the most malicious and belligerent way possible. Which means that we at the Egg have work to do, devils to mock, opinions to offer as if they were facts, all under the thin-worn cloak of our putative anonymity.
But not this week, and not next week either. Maybe during Bright Week, when we take a few blessed hours of rest. Until then, beware the forces of darkness, and remember us in your prayers.
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