April 2007

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It's Palm Sunday. That's my favorite day in the church year, for reasons that have very little to do with anything theological and a whole lot to do with my own childhood.

A rite of passage for me as a child was getting to sing in the junior choir at church. And my very first Sunday as a choir member was Palm Sunday the year I was eight. I was delighted it worked out that way.

I had loved the hymns associated with the day for several years. And I, for some reason known best to my cousin the music director, wound up being the child to lead the choir out during the recessional hymn. I may be one of the few people you'll ever run into who breaks into a grin at the opening notes of All Glory, Laud, and Honor.

Every year after that, when my mother and I would talk on Palm Sunday that first choir one would come to mind. She would always tell me about looking up from her hymnal and seeing the choir and getting a little weepy. By the end of the story's retelling, there were tears in two sets of eyes.

This conversation, by the way, was a Palm Sunday tradition for us, even if we didn't happen to be in the same town for the day.

So for me Palm Sunday includes Mother, and palm crosses, and old, familiar music, and lovely memories. And for all of those, I am grateful.