Maundy Thursday

I didn't know what Maundy Thursday meant. I was raised a Baptist, not footwashin, not southern, just Baptist, "plain Baptist", as my brother and I used to tell our friends. We didn't have Lent, Maundy Thursday or do much on Good Friday. We had Easter Sunday. Easter meant white shoes, a little white bag a new dress, a good dinner, and a big Easter Egg hunt followed by lots of little Easter Egg hunts.

Maybe that's why I love being part of the Episcopalians. They are good hearted and tolerant, they have beautiful rituals, a beautifully written book of common prayer and they believe in the mystery. In fact, they are quite at peace with the mystery.
The Mystery is all we don't know, can't answer, can't make sense of, can't explain and yet, can't completely deny. It is the mysteriously simple idea that there is more, so much more, so muchly much more (as Dr. Seuss puts it) than we'll ever know.

Today, I learned that Maundy Thursday means the day of the command, or mandate. The great command in the Bible is perhaps the most difficult: Love your neighbor as yourself. This requires something that many of us struggle with, loving ourselves. It's easier to see the God in other folks. When we look within, the flaws are often more apparent, clearer and more pressing. Maundy Thursday is the day to remember that we're all made in God's image, making us all just fine as is. Even people who aren't religious (and I don't call myself religious, having gone to church just once last year), find this simple command quite profound.

I've always thought of Easter as a day that we roll the stone away, step outside and emerge a bit different, still a bit dirty and mussed, yet hopeful. I love rituals that are attached to myth and history, I love that we can step outside of our busyness, and remember that there are beginnings just like there are endings.

There is one magazine I don't ever plan to give up, The Sun. This month's issue included an interview with John O'Donohue, an author who has a PhD in philosophical theology and a former priest who lives in a cottage in the west of Ireland. You can download the interview on the Sun website, it's pretty wonderful.

Here's a Maundy Thursday thought from Dr. O'Donohue's interview:

"No two stones are the same. No two fields are the same. No two waves or stars or faces are the same. No two thoughts are the same...the true calling of everything is to be itself."