This song, All Shall Be Well, by the St. Louis Jesuits, is an old one, not in the missalettes any more, but the message of hope is one we need.
The words of Psalm 63 in Lauds this morning resonated with me:
"O God, you are my God, for you I long;
for you my soul is thirsting,
My body pines for you
like a dry, weary land without water.
So I gaze on you in the sanctuary
to see your strength and your glory
...for you have been my help
in the shadow of your wings I rejoice,
My soul clings to you;
your right hand holds me fast."
Everyone is doing what they can to celebrate Easter. One of my relatives shared this message on Facebook this morning, from the Arthur, NE Baptist church:
"Communion at the fairgrounds. Remember to bring juice, water, crackers, bread, or whatever you may have available to drive-in church this Sunday."
Arthur is 50 miles from Anywhere, in a county where the cows way outnumber the people. They are used to improvising and making do with what they have.
Happy Easter to you, too, Katherine and everyone. Time for me to start our improvised feast: short ribs, baked yams, peas, and graham cracker fruit parfaits!
ReplyDeleteWhat's everyone else scrounging?
Sounds delicious! We had turkey breast (which got a little overdone) instant mashed potatoes and gravy, and salad from a bag. And a layered lemon pie; cheesecake layer on the bottom, lemon filling on top, with a squirt of Reddi Whip.
DeleteWe pulled off the usual Easter dinner: spiral sliced ham, potato salad, Harlequin baked beans, asparagus, rolls. One of the kids made a bunny cake, a yellow cake this year because one of the other kids doesn't like chocolate cake. No wine for me. No live masses or other guests, either. The previous Sunday, I had organized a Zokm call for the extended family, which went pretty well (some members of my parents' generation struggled a bit to make it work, and it cut us off cold after 40 minutes. I didn't organize a call for Easter, mostly because I subscribe to the theory that if one steps up to do a thing two times in a row, it becomes one's job in perpetuity. But nobody else stepped up yesterday. Sigh.
Delete"... if one steps up to do a thing two times in a row, it becomes one's job in perpetuity."
DeleteOMG! This explains so much!
Yes. I liked that, too. It could be natural law.
DeleteAnd he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.
ReplyDelete— Saint Augustine
Happy Easter, everyone!
We had a small breakfast, then watched the Easter liturgy streamed from the Washington National Cathedral. We started the afternoon by viewing Andrea Bocelli's Easter concert streamed from the Duomo in Milan. Then we had wonderful video calls with our families in California. Our grandchildren could show us that the Easter bunny DID make it. He's not self-isolating. Since Australia is ahead of us (it's Easter Monday there), we visited with our Oz family yesterday. Isn't technology wonderful?
Our Easter dinner will be (thawed) Maryland crab cakes (made from Chesapeake Bay blue crabs, the best crabs anywhere and frozen for a special occasion), potatoes, asparagus. I plan to make an apple crisp type dessert to go over ice cream. I only have 3 apples, but there are only two of us, so a cut down and improvised recipe will work fine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr54po5s0nQ&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1bkBF1lpevxmtd2V7g8F3icYZK_5NCR6OvhNx3_1RtSHpiilf5HavNvAs
Pretty amazing virtual choir video! I love that song.
DeleteI didn't know that had so many verses, but I am still trying to figure out how they did it. I guess it is a system where everybody logs on in a small box and can see the conductor in a big box. But I can't figure out how they get the small boxes together and lose the big box.
DeleteNo, that wouldn't work because as soon as you sang the first note you'd become the big box and lose the conductor. So I'll keep trying. May have a lot of time to think about it.
Happy Easter anyway. Alleluia for a week now.
Tom, I suspect they used Zoom or one of its competitors.
DeleteAnne, Yeah I was thinking it has to be some Zoomlike program. But two people talking at once is one of the things Zoom is least likely to handle well; it will either freeze the screen or distort the sound. There must be some kind of program that lets the person with the master screen see, hear and archive everybody at the same time. And do it while all of them can see the master, because they started each chorus together.
DeleteI caught the livestream Mass from America Magazine at 1130. My neighbor delivered some Easter dinner care packages in the AM and I received one. Brought it over to MaryAnn's to share and zapped it with UV-C and the attendant ozone. Maybe UV irradiation will become an Easter ritual.
ReplyDeleteSo how long do you do the UV radiation? Do you have it shielded to protect your eyes?
DeleteKatherine, I can leave it in a room or garage and turn it on with a remote control. I also built an enclosure and lined it with aluminum foil which reflects 90% of the light. The enclosure also concentrates the ozone for greater sterilization. I found a reference that says 20,000 joules per square meter reduces the virus by 99.9999%. Placing the items within one foot is equivalent a one meter area sphere. So the time for a 40 Watt lamp to reach the required exposure is 500 seconds or around nine minutes. Since I don't know yet what the wall plug efficiency is, I increased the exposure time by 3. I consider thus step to be in addition to wiping down surfaces. It is the outside of the food containers I am decontaminating. The food itself is ok to eat because stomach acid kills pathogens. I am continuing researching the subject.
Delete