Holy

I've often written and invited people into a holy exhaustion during this season -- come and worship, I've invited, feel the emotions that heighten and peak, and experience the glorious delight, the fear and joy that come with the resurrection.

I feel that holy exhaustion in a new way today, after having a funeral this morning with the sanctuary still smelling sticky sweet with Easter flowers, the cross still adorned with life and green, the alleluias still ringing in my ears. I feel that ache in my bones and that cloudy, hungover sense that makes me wonder what words are coming out of my mouth, as if I inhabit a different body. The deaths have lined up, one, two, three, and while the other two I will only mourn in my own way, not in the way of a leader, they are still present, and I struggle as always with the grief in the midst of sure knowledge of resurrection and everlasting life. It makes for a good sermon, but with it there is an exhaustion. Some might even say, a holy exhaustion.