Too much of a good thing

Rain sheeting relentlessly down driveways and sidewalks.

Chantler63 Shakespeare Challenge and National Poetry Writing Month
Well-known phrases from Shakespeare
Day 17: ‘too much of a good thing’ (As You Like It)

Rain is certainly a good thing, except when there's too much of it.
Ask Californians. Ask Noah.
Right now we are getting too much rain in Portland.
Today's photo shows how I know this.
Today's poem is about another way I know this.
It's only a haiku, but even poems can get to be too much of a good thing.
(If you don't get the poem, click on the link.)


BRILLIANT DECISIONS OF THE PORTLAND WATER BUREAU

Proof we don't need rain —
thirty-eight million gallons
flushing down the drain.

----------------------------
THE REASON FOR THE SEASON

It's Holy Week. I didn't go to church on Palm Sunday and wasn't sure I'd go on Easter. I hate fighting crowds and said to myself, "I think this year I'll leave Easter to the Christmas-and-Easter Christians." In fact at Trinity Cathedral the crowd also includes many non-churchgoers who come merely for the glorious music. It seems to me they need to be in church more than I do.

I hope my seeming irreverence doesn't shock you — in one of my earliest blips I warned you that I'm a "bad Catholic."

I felt rather uninterested in the pomp and ceremony of this week. Been there, done that. Thus I was surprised when I found myself hurrying to the Holy Thursday service tonight (commemorating the Last Supper, the institution of the mass, the night before Jesus is crucified). I finally got to see the archbishop in action: impeccable liturgy, sings very well, can't get too much incense, preaches as if he were reading from the Catechism and much too longwinded, mentioned Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI several times and Pope Francis not at all. (The ceremonial footwashing that's a traditional part of this service can reveal a lot. Last year Pope Francis washed the feet of prisoners, including a Muslim and a woman. This year he washed the feet of the disabled. The archbishop washed the feet of priests—and not both feet, but only one, an act both stingy and smacking of clericalism.)

When it came time for communion, I had a choice of receiving from the archbishop or from a lovely priest I've know for a decade who's also an artist and iconographer. I walked past the archbishop and got a sweet smile of recognition from the priest as he gave me communion. When I got back to my pew I noticed that I wasn't the only one who was making that choice.

There was a moment during the mass when I was praying for people in my life, past and present, that I felt connected with them in the spirit, and with Jesus in the spirit, and I was very glad I had come, despite the boring homily. Maybe I'll go on Easter after all. Somebody's gotta be there to pray for the music-lovers. ;-)