Today has been busy and good. I had the pleasure of being at our new church start's launch service in Parkville--the name of our new church is Northland UMC. Good band, good preaching, good crowd. Then a fast trip to the district office, then back to Lawson for a three church cluster charge conference. Home and baked cookies to take to the four church charge conference at Faith in Grain Valley tonight. And home to clean up the kitchen mess and watch the 4th game in the World Series. And blog.

Twas nearly enough to distract me from the liturgical fact that today is All Saints. This evening as I drove to Faith, I remembered what day it is, and I remembered a story that I shared in a time of centering at the beginning of the conference.

I have written here several times about the post-Christmas winter of 1998, and I do not need to describe it again. Separation, a pending divorce, announcing it, my sister's death. I have been thinking a lot about those months lately. And I remembered and shared the following shared tonight.

It was my first Sunday back at Community UMC in Columbia after my sister's memorial service. I had been off two weeks, and it was time for me to return. There is something very therapeutic for pastors, in the midst of sadness or tragedy, to be able to have good work to do, and others to care for even in the midst of our own grief. The appointed Epistle lesson for that Sunday was First Corinthians 13---which describes the agape love of brothers and sisters in Christ. I felt as if I was really doing well emotionally throughout all of the service in terms of the the music, through the sermon, through the liturgy for Holy Communion. Then it came time to serve the congregation. We had a large communion rail that encircled the chancel, and the first group came forward to be served. I have always said, when I give the bread to those who come for communion "The body of Christ, broken for you." But that Sunday, the Sunday when I felt as if I had it under control despite my grief, when I bent down to serve the first of the congregation, the Troyer family, first Mike the dad, I simply could not speak. I could not remember the words I had said hundreds of times before. They would not come. So Mike, understanding what was happening, said them for me, "The body of Christ, broken for you, Susan" as I handed him the bread. That act of transcendent love was enough to bring me back to my role and my real knowledge that that beautiful body of Christ, broken for me, was also the beautiful body of Christ, called Community United Methodist Church, where as I continued to pastor and care and preach, would be the buoying, gently powerful presence of the real love of the faithful, which is not loud like a clanging symbol, nor does it come from our own skills of speaking like angels or doing great works of mercy. It is the gift that flows from the wounds of Christ on the cross. How beautiful is the body of Christ.