Palm Sunday

It was a sunny but brisk Palm Sunday as we set out for the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in the usual last minute chaos. The Methodists, with whom we share this once a year ecumenical effort, had hoped to bring along a donkey, but the donkey had other plans and refused to budge from its place in front of the church, so they had to leave him behind. Once we all gathered at the Monument and the blessing of the palms began, it all seemed worth the effort and we processed cheerfully back to our churches singing the old standards and stopping traffic on West End Avenue. Then it was two hours of passion liturgy and another hour afterward rehearsing for Maundy Thursday, for which I'm MC, as usual. Thankfully we had a very hearty coffee hour with Thelma's homemade quiches among other goodies in between.

Then after an afternoon at the cinema (Ice Age 2) we returned for an evening of Bach's Markus-Passion, performed by our choir plus some guest soloists and a string quartet. It was a rare performance of this work with selected recitatives by Keiser to round it out and Doug and the choir and soloists did a splendid rendition. I sat in my second favorite spot, back by the newly cleaned south wall with a view up the aisle of the choir and excellent sound as well as peace and quiet. We had a great crowd for this initial fundraising effort and it was just a transcendent evening until I found out afterward that our resident mental case had had a meltdown by the West End door on our new rug. The poor rector had to clean it up and missed half the concert. It was a sad ending to an otherwise glorious Palm Sunday and seemed to bear out the rector's sermon that morning about Simon of Cyrene and the unforeseen cross one is sometimes forced to bear.