A brief snippet from a longer piece I’m working on:

In seminary our liturgy professor told my class that the Triduum, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Vigil, preach themselves.  And I knew that it was true. 

I remember the liturgy, but not what my priest said about it, not how it was presented, not how the logistics happened (even now I have to look things up and walk through it in my head).  My memory simply holds the story of this days, more than the details.

It must’ve been middle school when I first attended this liturgies.  I remember watching the women in the choir slip off shoes and knee high pantyhose.  For my middle school, engineer raised self, this was insight into the mystery of womanhood and sudden equality with people I looked up to.  Somehow, tonight, we became more alike than not.
I remember strangers, for all that we’d worshipped together for half a decade or more, handling my o-so-sensitive feet kindly and gently—unlike my brothers who still delighted in tickling me breathless. 

And I still walk away from the simplicity of chairs, basins, towels, and water wondering how they add up to so very much.