This is one of the few Saturday night-Sunday morning periods that I'm spending at home during the sabbatical, and how strange this time has been for me! Last night, numerous times, automatically, I felt the weekly Saturday night anxiety: of having to be "on" the next morning. Each time I realized: "Oh, but wait. No. Relax." It's like the anxiety is coded into my genes, after three decades of high-demand Sunday mornings!

This morning has been strange for me in a deeply positive way. I woke up early, with energy. (I'm over my jet lag and back on eastern daylight savings time.) I sat down with my mug of coffee and with the daily lectionary with the sense that this sabbath day time is holy time. I can actually consider today to be the sabbath, since I am on sabbatical from those high-demand Sunday mornings. And so, the time since 5:00 AM has been rich: praying and reading (this morning I've read the Introducation and Chapter One of Roberta Bondi's Memories of God -- which has struck me as nothing less than the greatest writing in the history of Western civilization (!) because I have had the time to be contemplative and open), in the joyful anticipation of worship a little later (this morning at St. Martin's Episcopal Church).