...and so the story begins, again, for the 2000th or more time...

Palm Sunday, or as some call it, Passion Sunday.

We celebrate in the evening at the Open Door (for now, at least, though Easter is always celebrated in the morning), so I haven't been to church yet, though I have a few stops to make today:

• To the Union Project, where John will help me finish my Station: more on the miracle of that, coming later this week.
• To Bellefield for a women's breakfast, the community of women that have known me (some of them) since I was 19 and a sophomore in college. (I'm 35 now, which seems very bizarre.)
  
• To clean the apartment in preparation of the parental visit (it was walk through-able after Sally's visit, but the Station making rendered it clogged once more.)
• To greet the parents and have a meal and
  
• Off to church to celebrate with palm fronds.

bobbie (who has come back, woo hoo!) posted this morning on a post (do you see where this is going, a significant link??) from Don't Eat Alone, which sounds like what I'm working on for Easter.

So here's a taste (get it, a taste??) from Don't Eat Alone:

The first time around, I’m sure there was a much smaller gathering of the faithful at Golgotha than on what we have come to call Palm Sunday. Even the first Easter was not so well attended. I wonder how many years on it was before churches began putting out extra seating for the “Easter crowd.” I don’t know of any minister who doesn’t wonder what could be done to get more of those who come primarily on Christmas and Easter to participate more regularly and meaningfully in the congregation. The reasons for why people don’t find a more significant connection are as varied as the number of them who come: grief, pain, indifference, priorities, hurt feelings, time, to name a few. But on Easter, and maybe even Palm Sunday, they’re in the room.

Let’s start there. Don’t worry about the timing. Feed them.

Go read the rest...it will rock your socks, even if you're still in bare feet.

What hit me (except for the whole post, which almost knocked me off my chair) in this passage was that I'm agonizing over the Easter Feast. Last week at the OD, BJ asked who would be around as they were thinking to have a meal. About 30 folks raised their hands, and on about Tuesday, I shot BJ an email. "Put me on the list to help with that." Which is when BJ told me the OD was not going to have a meal. Well, shoot, I have made a point to NOT go home to see the Louise-in-Virginia family for Easter b/c it's the most important holy day for me, and I wanna be with my OD family, so there's gonna be food. So I shot off an announcement for the OD emails and I'll stand up (in front of my parents and the OD congregation) and say, "We're going to eat on Easter, please join us." (Not knowing yet who "we" are, although I did get two emails.)

Because I worry.

I worry about how many. Let's count noses and nickels.

Let's make sure there's a big to do, dag-gone-it!

Which is SO not the point, anyways.

A community can be two or more "gathered in My name."

So happy Palm Sunday. I'll be posting Lenten stuff all week, sharing about the journey of the Station I made for the OD, which will debut this afternoon at the Union Project, from 4-6. It will be part of the Unblurred First Fridays on Good Friday.

Thanks for being a part of my community. Really. I couldn't have written this without you.