
Didn't my family just arrive in the desert yesterday?
Didn't we just experience the St. Brigid Thursday night community for the first time?
Didn't each of my tiny daughters receive their first communion a moment ago from the hands of those gathered in Heidi Chapel?
St. Brigid, the small gathering of young adults and families from ASU Episcopal Campus Ministry and St. Augustine's Church, passed away last night. We built an altar of stones as a sacred tribute, and my not-quite-one-year-old splashed the bowl of water that bore the stones with which we built it.
I have watched my daughters engage the sacramental life in this community. My baby, who was barely four months old when we first visited, took her first steps in front of the St. Brigid community last night, blazing a sacred trail around the room and climbing into the lap of our priest during the eucharistic prayer as unabashed concelebrant. Both of my daughters have inspired the breaking open of the word. Both of my daughters have broken the bread. Both of my daughters have shared gestures, looks, and wise words to give a roomful of adults pause. Both of my daughters have done what the older children did before them.
Her precise words escape me, but my toddler said last night, during the breaking of bread, "Ooh, bread! It's so good!" And later, as she ate, she said, "Oh, my God!" And I said, "Oh, your God."
I don't know what their liturgical formation will look like anymore beyond Sunday Mass, but I know that my daughters have walked and danced with the wild Spirit over these last eight months, and they have been met with wings of welcome and delight. Their lives will never be the same.
And neither will mine.
But the past isn't the end of the story--it marks the beginning of a new story. What will come next? How will I, their mother and on-hand liturgist, continue what the Spirit has inspired?
Where does the story turn next?