So, mize well just get to it, then.

It's Sunday morning, the Fourth Sunday of Advent. I have not been to my own church for a service since Thanksgiving Day, when I preached, mostly about gratitude. Three days later, Advent 1, I began a sabbatical which is to end the Sunday after Trinity, in June, a million years from now. I am to spend the entire church year, the whole Christmas cycle and the whole Easter cycle and the little snip of Ordinary Time in between, away from the parish which has been my home since I was half my age. I am on a self-imposed fast, a self-imposed exile, a self-imposed six-month sojourn in the wilderness, not in Egypt, but in Babylon.

I am an Episcopal deacon. Those two nouns, separately and together, define and describe me so fully and so deeply that I cannot imagine not being either Episcopal or Deacon, much less not both. And the parish, as I said, has been there, in the background or the foreground of my life, since 198-3? Since then, things have happened, life has happened, God has happened, I have happened.

Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.

(thanks, Bob!) And I am prevented from going there, for worship, for community, for grounding, for anything, for the duration. And I am prevented from putting on the alb and the stole and the dalmatic, prevented from proclaiming the Gospel and serving at Table, prevented from being the other pastoral presence, prevented from being the person God has made me all these years, also for the duration.

Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious favour, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy Name, and finally, by thy mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This Fall, I wrote the Archdeacon, who spoke with the Bishop, who approved this sabbatical without a blink, apparently, and I am committed to it. I am locked-in to being locked-out. So here I sit, I can do no other (thanks, +Bob!). But can I do it? Ay, there's the rub. I guess we'll see.