I received some joyful words from Roy Wright on Christmas morning that served as a balm for my soul after a wild and woolly Christmas Eve.
 
It was his description of our Christmas Eve Service laced with endearing humor and the sense of God’s presence in it with us, embracing our human frailties. 

I thought you would enjoy reflecting on the Christmas Eve Service with his lightheartedness, which creates quite a pleasant soulful vignette!  For those of you who missed this Christmas Eve with us, let this fuel your imagination as you will! For those who were also there, may we lift a ‘cheers’ to deciding how it is we choose to tell our stories. 
 
Roy’s letter lightened my spirit and as I read and reread it, I am finding that it keeps Christmas for me.  Fortunately, Christmas lasts for 12 days! (and is not all spent in one quizzical night)
 
So here’s this, from Roy:
 
“Good Morning, Ruth......
What a wonderful Christmas Eve service at Highpoint! 
Thank you and all the members for the team effort to make the service a success. 
Yes, as I pondered the service afterwards it seemed like parts of it were from a scene from a Fellini movie - pianist has flat tire, arrives late wearing a Christmas cap, sort of stumbles through the hymns, but is probably a wonderful improvisational jazz pianist, John with his wonderful baritone voice pitching in to help move along a hymn, Mike’s occasional vocals and the lady, who was a guest, had her small dog regaled in his special Christmas outfit. It was all good and God was in the midst of it all accepting and forgiving our human frailties.”
 
Roy’s greeting, that “The New Year for Highpoint will be a good year!”,
is mine as well, to you.
 
In Merriment and Love,
Ruth+

​There were several, but naturally I chose this one because it’s the one I remember playing with as a child. The tik-tik-tik, or the tik. . . .tik. . . .tik, depending on where you positioned the weight.
 
It's broken now, the weight slides but doesn’t hold, it just sinks back down to the bottom, but still the timing, the rhythm is a pleasant one, the sound of it, reminiscent.  I enjoy the visual and the connection it holds for me with my dad, and to our music room, to his piano, even to the relentless piano students who came to the house for lessons and set the metronome for keeping time.
 
It’s funny to me now, to think that as a child I enjoyed playing with “time”, because I’ve said of myself a million times over, that I have no internal clock. It shrinks and expands and stands still at will. I thank God daily for the rising and setting of the sun and the assurance it gives me that I am always in God’s time and that he alone turns the darkness into the morning. He, my time keeper.
 
But really, we really do play with time. Time is a gift to us, for us, for our life. And like the piano students, we don’t always get it right nor always wrong, because really, it’s about the music, and music making, and playing~ the music.
 
I guess the point of keeping time is that it helps us stay together in something communal.  It’s one thing if you’re a concert pianist and have the stage to yourself, then you get to decide just how you want the timing to play out. 
 
Some of us set the weight high on the slide to slow it down a bit, and some would fix it low because it ticks super fast and makes us move, like the cha-cha.  
Presto, allegro, adagio, largo. .  .
We all have personal preference, and vantage point, and some kind of internal pace setting . . . but the beauty is the music. We play. Together.
 
As a community, we are all listening for the heartbeat of God in creation and we are depending on it’s rhythm to keep time for us.  We are looking to sun and moon and their movement on the horizon as God’s invitation to expand and reach and live into the love.  Both day and night are witness to God’s delight in our life together and where we might go as a faith community, because God has given us ~ more time.
 
When we use the word ‘remember’, at the liturgy of the table, we mean that the walls of time collapse and all are present at the table with us and we are caught up in the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection, and find ourselves at his Eucharistic feast. We are caught up in the mystery of God’s love and the Communion of Saints.  
 
I count you among the saints in light and I rejoice in this crazy time keeping, beat skipping, note missing, occasionally harmonious music we are making, but we are playing, and in the family I grew up in, “playing” meant making music.
 
Cheers to a joyful noise!
Ruth+
“As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, world without end. Amen.”