As I write this on Good Friday night I have the luxury of hours before bedtime to reflect upon
the new liturgy we observed this Holy Week. We have had a full day of rites beginning with Lauds and Meditation, moving into the hours of Holy Remembrance, Solemn Commemoration of the Passion, and finally, the Entombment Liturgy (Good Friday Vespers). In addition, San Romero's Stations of the Cross completed a Good Friday observance like no other in my experience.
It was good to have been prepared for the contemplative liturgy created for Holy Week by Cynthia Bourgeault (with Ward Bauman and Darlene Franz) and the Episcopal House of Prayer. Having read Bourgeault's book,
The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, I was fully aware of the import of Wednesday's Anointing Ceremony. We anointed one another in preparation; we were to accompany the Beloved on this most holy journey
----- as fellow travelers, in full communion, taking and imparting courage and comfort by turns.
Day by day as we moved through the week with ablution and absolution on Tuesday, anointing on Wednesday, supper, foot washing and liturgy of the New Commandment on Thursday, we spiralled deeper down the sacred story. I experienced becoming still and more still as the meditation periods became more frequent and longer, as the simple but totally expressive chants deepened into rounds of heartfelt experience. The more still I became on the outside the more I was moving within.
Even my sleep became deep and still as I healed from a slight back injury; gone was the tossing and turning and pain. Last night at the Vigil in the Garden, I had glimmers of the vision quest experience. The reserved sacrament was on the altar, the flower-bedecked "garden" and altar illumined by a single candle flame. The shadows cast by the flame began to dance and deepen and suggest.
Suddenly I felt that I understood the full rich meaning of the term "still life". All was still, but for the light and for my dear soul, and soul's Companion, while we prayed and petitioned and promised. All was still, and yet, we were all in vast, submerged, inexorable motion.
We were moving toward death, as we always are.
The experience of still life was exquisite. And on Good Friday, when we are as still as the grave with our sorrows, sorrow for the world and sorrow for our sins, we are still moving toward the light of Easter morning, because in communion we know that love is strong as death.
The first time I heard the Exsultet was at St. Bart's, when Andrea Meyer sang it in front of a mega-crowd. She had practiced for months and was still nervous. But when she opened her mouth, her voice soared and the intense beauty of that chant held me transfixed. A subconscious wish to sing that glorious song was planted in my brain that night.
Red wrigglers are wonderful, bright little worms and they simply adore compost. They are wizards of alchemy, transforming yesterday's food scraps into nutritious soil in which tomorrow's meals will be grown. 
Still Life