Having committed to daily blogging during All Souls recovery work in Mississippi and New Orleans, I quickly began to realize the impotence of words to convey what was before us and what we were experiencing.  I recall vividly our first drive along Highway 50 in Pass Christian and the silence that came over the van.  I remember as vividly the same silence that overtook the van as Julie George led us around the neighborhoods of New Orleans.

One day our work took us to the Chalmette neighborhood of New Orleans and a home where a retired music teacher had lived in the attic of her flooded house for a week before being rescued.  The waters had claimed her piano and countless boxes of sheet music as well as years of collected LP's.  In the kitchen was a square hole recently cut in the sheet rock.  We asked our intern about it.  She told us that when she came to scout out the house, there on the kitchen wall was a letter to the woman's children.  Written after many days in the attic, it was a goodbye letter as she had no remaining food or water and had despaired of being saved.  Our intern felt that was too personal simply to be part of a gutting.  Where are the words for that?

Tonight we begin vigil.  We watch with Jesus as events unfold.  We watch as Jesus disappears from our sight, from our lives.  It is not a time for many words.  It is a time simply to watch and listen to the silence.  I think part of the tragedy of our time is our inability to be in silence, our inability to know and welcome its gifts.  Always rushing to find words that suggest we are competent in the moment, fully aware and in charge of ourselves and our environment, we devour the sacred food of silence, the sacred food of not knowing.  Only empty vessels can receive.

May we find the courage in these next days to dwell in the silence.  May we immerse ourselves in it, not to conquer it, but to be welcomed by it, received by it, spoken to by it.

Blessed Maundy Thursday,

Todd Donatelli