Despite the rehearsals, I had no intention of singing the cantana on Palm Sunday. I woke up with a stiff neck and my swollen lymph nodes made it painful to swallow. I had good reason to skip. But I reported to the church on time, even early, and donned a choir robe almost immediately. There seemed to be no way out of it.

Seated next to the tenor section, one of the men mentioned to me that we have a mutual friend. I said her daughter had babysat my kids when they were little. I had told her recently that I'm singing here, with them. He said, "Well, now word is out and it's all over town." I'm quite sure he's joking! He thanked me for singing with them. And his wife also thanked me.

In the ninety minutes before the service started, we went through the entire work of music. I had practiced on my own with an instrumental CD of the alto part. My goal was to memorize at least the words but I could not. Except for those portions lifted directly from sacred scripture.

Someone proposed that we pray together before the service started. That seemed like a novel idea so I encouraged them. We all moved to the kitchen and held hands. It was quick. Taking our seats again, someone said that, in recent memory, only one person had ever passed out. I mentioned that my oldest son, who is 16, passed out last night during the reading of the Passion at church. (Jeff caught him.)

Our thorough warm up raised my confidence and the music was so beautiful that I simply found myself singing the piece without realizing it. A couple of times I heard my own voice which is never a good thing in a choir. And another time my voice cracked. I felt that the middle songs were weak; we were sloppy.

But I hear it was well received by the fifty or so attendees, the congregation. Still, I don't know a soul there, not anyone from our "big" little town. People claim the church as theirs, including my piano teacher. But she hasn't been, she hasn't picked up her envelopes yet for the year. I'm tempted. To. Bring. Them. To. Her.

The whole thing runs about 30 minutes. The finale is based on Philippians 2:6-11 which happened to be the second reading in the lectionary.

We did not sound like this, of course:



About the only thing there was time for afterwards was the offertory. We sang the doxology:

Not one but two cars in the retreat center parking lot had left their lights on overnight. The Ford was close to the building entrance, but facing towards it, giving me the faulty impression that someone was getting picked up early. The other was parked just to the far side of mine, and mine was the farthest possible from the building. I approached with caution, in the pre-dawn darkness, dragging my wheeled suitcase across the crushed stone, unpaved lot. I didn't dare venture to that far side, inside piling my things into my car from the near side. Consequently, I didn't realize the car was empty and even unlocked. It was a BMW from a Princeton dealership. I even had an idea of whose it was.

I was the first and for some time the only one to mount again the spiral staircase to the third floor widow's walk for what the retreat schedule termed "sunrise prayer." The sun would not be up for another hour. Stairs lit from the floor below.

I brought the book I was reading with me, forgetting it's too dark to read. A woman who had also just returned from placing her belongings in her car joined me. And then two more women. We sat in silence for a time until one of the women began saying she never thought she'd be where she is today. And she began to sob, talked about exorcising demons from everyone around her. Not knowing what sort of tears hers were, I brought the beach-themed tissue box to her in the darkness and made a gentle offer. I could do little else for her. The first woman began an out-loud, extemporaneous prayer which I had little stomach for. I largely tuned it out. When she ran out of words, she went downstairs.

It was time for the next scheduled event, "morning reflections." I went down also. It would be my final retreat event before checking out and leaving. I sat directly next to the guest speaker whose talks I was skipping. As the other women gathered in the second floor lounge, one came flying in and crashed into a couple of the retreat coordinators. She was distraught because she had word that her father was having a medical emergency. I thought she might rather go to her family and when someone offered to drive her, she laughed and said he was in Central America.

As we sat there together, I caught the guest speaker craning to see my book's spine for its title but the print is small on the long name. I doubt she came up with it, and she didn't ask me for it. The woman who had prayed aloud upstairs repeated the very same words to this new group. She must have thought the words good.

I was the first to check out, the three at the front desk told me. I mentioned the two cars in the lot with their headlights on but raised little interest among them. "You have the makes and models and probably the license plates of the retreatants who drove. One is a BMW and the other is a Ford. You can learn whose cars these are." Unmotivated. Their working weekend was over. Before getting into my own car, I switched off the lights in the BMW next to me, now that it was daylight and I could see that it was unoccupied. Why doesn't a BMW's lights turn off automatically when left on accidentally?

I drove to mass at St. Francis. There was a pancake breakfast right before which I thought strange considering the fast. The church was packed and I figured everyone on the island was in attendance. Fr. Kevin seemed impatient with the cantor, as if he wanted to speed through things. Local police stopped traffic on Long Beach Blvd so parishioners could exit the parking lot. Again, isn't the entire island here?

In my Facebook newsfeed, a fellow retreatant posted several group selfies and also this one. I can't say that I caught her in the act of bible reading, up in the widow's walk. But, God, I hope she did.