The Year Nobody Wants to Remember...

 ...and the Christmas nobody will forget.  

Okay...five years -- a pilgrimage (check out my other blog, El Peregrino Dave), a broken leg (Facebook "Hello Toes"), some unspeakable community tragedies, an old dog (other than me), a new Bishop with a better process, and now I decide to write some more.  But it's time.

Right now, the world is in the grip of a viral pandemic that claims lives and can only (at this point) be stopped by mask-wearing, enhanced hygiene and sanitation, physical distancing and social isolation.  Recent news of a vaccine, while encouraging, is months away from delivery.  And with our provincial Department of Health unable to assure us of increased capacity in our buildings, we (mostly me) decided to cancel in-person worship through the Christmas season this year.  So it is the year nobody wants to remember and the Christmas nobody will forget.  I told a reporter friend of mine, that this is the year the people will look back to when I'm long gone and say, "Do you remember Christmas 2020?  That was the year Church was cancelled at Christmas."

Through the varieties of lockdown and isolation these past eight months, we have collectively undertaken new hobbies, caught up on things left undone, figured out to meet via social media and streaming services (the last time I wrote on this blog, nobody had heard of Zoom), ceased traveling and reconfigured life on a much smaller scale.

And Christmas is two weeks away.  Most years, I would be singing carols with East Coast Carolling, fostering faith formation through an Advent program, writing a seasonal mailing to go to the Parish this weekend, collecting gift boxes for seafarers, and setting up communion visitations for the week after Christmas.  This year, I am planning a Zoom children's presentation, arranging physically distanced live-stream of Lessons and Carols for Christmas for Dec 24 at 19:00, and just like the Queen, a Christmas Day message.

Separate, yet together.

Today's weigh-in: 220 Still working on that.