Disoriented and adrift

There are moments when I ask myself (somewhat impatiently, I have to confess) why the heck is it taking so long to find my bearings, settle in, and get back to full productivity.

After all, it’s been almost a month…!

And, after all, it’s almost Easter and there’s so much to do…!

But the truth of the matter is that I could not believe we were already at Palm Sunday last week. And I’m having a hard time fully comprehending that Easter is in less than a week.

A big part of why I’m feeling so disoriented and cast adrift is because — for the music ministry — the Easter season is usually anchored by our Good Friday performance of the Oratorio, Christ Lives. But this year there’s no choir, no Oratorio performance, no live Sunday service music at all.

I’m still plenty busy, but with a wide variety of tasks, many of which continue to evolve day to day in response to the ongoing crisis. It feels scattered and piecemeal, and I can’t help reflecting on how different it would be if this were any other year.

If it were a “normal” year, our rehearsals would have been steadily intensifying over the past four weeks. We would have been meeting regularly with soloists; arranging instrumental rehearsals; meeting with our sound and production teams; figuring out choir formations and seating diagrams. Tomorrow night would have been our final run-through before Friday’s performance. At this point we would be having a hard time thinking about anything but the Oratorio, as we more fully immersed ourselves in Christ’s life with every practice and rehearsal.

So, yeah. As we get closer to Easter, I guess the reality of it all is starting to hit home. I really, really miss it.