Easter Madness Part One: Teaching Parish

This weekend has been a crazy weekend with teaching parish. The pastor's husband is a lawyer at a firm in the bay area. He was trying to get secular people to understand the demands on pastors at this time of year. He finally said think of being an accountant in tax season, now imagine that the tax season is in a week's period of time. I noted that as I felt that I had only been home for sleeping and eating.
Saturday we had a craft event with the families with young kids. That was actually kind of fun because most of the stuff was simple enough even for me with no hand eye coordination to do. However I lamented that I really enjoyed making these little candies, and was kind of releived to accidentally drop most of them on the ground on my way out the door. I got the tip from the pastors husband that to get the egg dye off my hands, use Clorox. So I went by way of safeway on my way home and that proved to be a useful tip.
Saturday evening the ELCA churches in the area met at a church and the pastors, teaching parish students and confirmation kids headed into Gregory of Nyssa in San Fransisco for their Easter Vigil. It was a long service but it didnt feel long. The choir was excellent, the priests and deacons were really good speakers. And for the hymns before and after the Eucharist we were taught dance steps and we danced. Afterwards, they had food for us. And they had things like fruit, cheese and meat. So they had more things I could justify eating than after a Lutheran service. We also got to process around the church as they listed all kinds of names of people of the world from history and current events to join us in worship. It ranged from Angela of Folingo to Galileo to Heath Ledger. All kinds of well known figures were mentioned. It was really powerful. The only time I cringed was at the mention of the late Jerry Falwell, but essentially he is a christian brother as well I suppose. But the service itself was so wonderfully festive. And it was fun to see some very creative ways of embracing worship.
Sunday morning I sang with the choir at church. One thing that was really neat is that there were 5 baptisms at church that day, not dissimilar from the way ancient catechumins were initiated into the christian faith: on easter. There was something really powerful about that. And there was no infant baptism at all. There were four school aged children and one adult who received the sacrament of baptism. It was quite powerful to see how excited one of the girls was to get baptized as she lit up by this whole event. Sometimes I have caught myself questioning if we really need this ritual at all if it is a matter of God meeting us and not us meeting God. (I'm such a good lutheran in that regard at least). However it really affirmed how powerful it is to have this ritual that says welcome into the family of God. And it was powerful to have this done on Easter where we are celebrating the resurrection of our Lord!
I realized that I have quite enjoyed most of the events of the week. I think that really the craft event was the only thing I didnt feel as drawn to as the rest of the events. Which makes me realize that within my questioning if I would make a good minister that if I enjoy this craziness that this is an affirmation of my sense of call!