anniversaries

January (named for Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings and endings) brings a lot of anniversaries for me, besides the New Year celebration, of which I am a fan. Like January's namesake, I spend much of January looking backward and forward. This year, I started a new habit of burning a calendar in a New Year's Eve Fire (Started in honor of my friend Heidi, who's had a really crappy year; we came up with that ritual to mark the change.) The fire has always been an important part of marking the end of one year and the beginning of the next. My favorite part is reawakening from the buried coals a new fire on January 1; a fire rising from the ashes like an ascending Phoenix.

On January 6 (Epiphany, and Sister Gretchen's Birthday) I was ordained a priest at St. Mary's, Cypress. A friend reminded me to play some Nirvana since our music director, Celeste, helped me adapt "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to be a setting for Psalm 72. That was eight years ago. We had another memorable fire that night. A friend threw a paper sack full of tortilla chips on a fire-pit. I never realized how much oil is in tortilla chips until that night, when we almost burned down my shed. I spent two great years at St. Mary's learning about being a priest from Beth Fain and the rest of the congregation before joining Patrick Miller over at St. Mark's where my job title changed about every 9 months. Associate Rector, Chaplain, Priest Associate, Priest Missioner...then it was time to stretch my wings a bit. When I first started searching for what's next, I never expected to be leaving the Diocese of Texas as well as the Houston Area to land on this wonderful island "near Texas." I've already been here two years.

January 8 is the big anniversary that got me thinking about focusing on anniversaries for this blog. It will be 15 years ago this year that Laura and I were married in San Marcos at that St. Mark's. Since then, it seems things haven't stopped moving for long. The week after we got married, we moved to Houston, where I worked as the director of youth and young adult ministry at Christ Church Cathedral, and Laura worked as an Environmental Investigator for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. We enjoyed three years there before moving to Alexandria, Virginia for seminary. Once back in Houston, Laura finally started nursing school. We took turns with that phase of our education. In all three cities that we've lived our married life (Houston, Alexandria, and Port Aransas) we've made great friends, found ways for each of us to keep growing personally, and found ways to spend time in nature. We've also been surrounded and supported by wonderful Episcopal churches, my spiritual tribe all along the way. Which brings me the next anniversary.

January 9 is Eli's Baptism Anniversary.  He was baptized in an art gallery in a washtub. It was the temporary baptismal font for St. Mark's Between the Bayous. It was supplied by Murray Powell and everyone brought a jar of water from their home or the Colorado River in one case. The Powells later brought the same tub to my house full of ice and beer. Eli is four and a half now, and our adventure continues.

By the time I get to January 24th, my birthday, I'm usually ready to do something more forward looking than backward looking--last year Kevin Schubert and I played a show at the Gaff. This year my friend Justin Stewart is coming over to play a show in our living room. I hope he'll play American Crow, one of his new songs that Eli adores (and sings it on his own, but sometimes adds in a Rainbow Crow for fun.) Maybe I'll sing As the Crow Flies, which is one of two love songs I've written, the other being a song I wrote to propose to Laura. I sang it to her on the banks of the San Marcos River. It was a new song to her, and the chorus is about not knowing "what tomorrow holds," but to "push it on down the line" to find out.

So, this January I look backward and forward. I give thanks for the bright highlights I've mentioned here as well as the darker times of discernment, reflection, and inner work that you know lurk around all these moves, events, and decisions. I continue to push it down the line, knowing now that it's not a straight line, but more of a spiral. I loop around to stitch in another January, look back at where I've been, and I look forward to what's to come.