“After every royal wedding,” wrote one Episcopal priest friend online, “I get a spate of requests from brides-to-be: ‘Can I have a ceremony just like _____?’ I wonder if the same will happen after the Queen’s funeral: ‘Can my mother’s service be just like the Queen’s?’”

And the answer, remarkably, is: Yes. (Sort of.)

It’s one of the most powerful things about the Prayer Book tradition. No, your casket probably won’t be escorted into the church by an array of highly-trained and colorful soldiers. No, the prayers probably won’t be read by the heads of every Christian tradition in the country. No, the queue at your visitation probably won’t be ten miles long.

But yes: the dignity and the majesty and the beauty of that service can be yours. The power of the Prayer Book tradition is that while the ritual and the decoration and the music may vary, the heart of the liturgy remains the same. Those words—from “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord…” to everything that follows—have been said innumerable times. They have been said for kings and queens, laid to rest surrounded by hundreds of dignitaries. They have been said in nearly-empty churches, for unknown neighbors found frozen on the street. They have been said in small churches and large ones, in the heart of the city and the middle of nowhere, for millions and millions of ordinary people who lived millions and millions of ordinary lives: striving, imperfect, loving, beloved.

For me, the most powerful moment of the day was the simple commendation, spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury: “Heavenly Father, King of kings, Lord and giver of life… we entrust the soul of Elizabeth, our sister here departed, to thy merciful keeping, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life…”

“We” is not the royal we. It does not mean the bishop. It doesn’t mean the royal family. It doesn’t even mean the people of England, or of the United Kingdom. It means “we,” the Church, the family of God, entrust the soul of Elizabeth, our sister, to God. In Christ there is no title or rank but “sister,” no king or queen but the “King of kings.” In Christ, all human hierarchies dissolve: we are simply siblings in one family of God, and while the rituals we attach to the liturgy reflect our stature in this world, God makes no distinctions among us. “We brought nothing into this world,” as the funeral service says, “and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” We leave behind everything we have and everyone we know, journeying deeper into the love of God:

changed from glory into glory
            till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
            lost in wonder, love, and praise!

So “Go forth, O Christian soul, from this world.” May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, by the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Some of you may know that I’m only at St. John’s part-time. Some of you may even wonder what I do with the rest of my time! This week was a typical one for me: a weekday spent working on a ‘virtual pilgrimage’ app for a church in Florida; an early-morning Zoom with a canon from the Anglican cathedral in Singapore about creating digital prayer resources for the Church of the Province of South East Asia (well, for him it was a late-night Zoom, given the 12-hour time difference!); and, most locally and, for the moment, most relevantly, joining the Life Together community as a Prayer Partner.

Life Together is the Episcopal Service Corps program in the Diocese of Massachusetts, a kind of “church AmeriCorps” in which young adult volunteers live together in an intentional community, serve in year-long placements at local parishes and non-profits, and receive training in prophetic leadership, contemplative practices, and community building. It’s a pretty awesome program—and one with which you’re all indirectly connected, since I was a Life Together fellow in 2013-14!

This is my first year as a “Prayer Partner.” Prayer Partners accompany the fellows for a year, meeting with them twice a month as a group to pray for and with them, listen to them, and support them in their life as a community and as individuals.  

It was a huge gift to me to spend Monday afternoon with the fellows at their home in the rectory of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Dorchester, to get to know them and to begin a relationship with them. They’ve dedicated a year or two of their lives to becoming more connected to God, one another, and themselves, and to serving the common good—and they are passionate about the work they are setting out to do.

You can click here to read more about this year’s Life Together fellows. (N.B.: “Micah Fellow” means first-year fellow, “Emmaus Fellow” means a second-year fellow.) I hope you’ll join me in praying for them and for their life together as they begin this new year.

I couldn’t help but laugh during this week’s press conference about the upcoming, month-long closure of the Orange Line. State officials shared a map of the area expected to see “severe congestion” on the roads, with Charlestown right at the center of the scary pink blob. “If possible,” added the state’s highway administrator, “avoid the region altogether until the diversion period has ended.”

So long, folks! I’ll see you in October!

“Avoiding the region” is something not so easily done for those of us who live or work or go to school or go to church within couple miles of the Orange Line or I-93. And in fact, it’s not so easily done in life in general.

There are times when we desperately want to avoid something, or someone, but we can’t. Some of the time, of course, it’s a matter of health or safety; the thing we are trying to avoid really is dangerous, and we really ought to try to avoid it, and to seek others’ help. Other times, it’s a matter of prejudice or phobia; we want to avoid something, but we’re actually better off if we encounter it, and find that we’re safe, and our anxiety or prejudice or phobia will diminish over time. And sometimes, it’s relatively easy to “avoid the region,” which I suppose is what the advice was really meant to suggest: if you live in the suburbs, this is not a good time to drive into the city to visit a museum or eat at a restaurant!

But most of the time, most unpleasant experiences are simply there to be endured. Whether twenty minutes of a particularly long and dreadful sermon, or an hour in the dentist’s chair for a particularly uncomfortable procedure, or a month without public transit and our streets full of irate commuters, some experiences simply cannot be avoided.

So what are we to do?

At times like this, it’s no surprise that the Serenity Prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s is so popular. It circulates in various forms, but it’s always something like:

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, the courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

It’s sage advice for any situation. There are some things over which we simply have no control (the weather, the words that come out of another person’s mouth, the inner workings of the MBTA). But there are other things over which we have… not control, maybe, but at least some influence: our own words, our own actions, the focus of our own attention. And throughout our lives, in situations of frustration or anger, God invites us again and again to turn away from feeding the flames of our rage and set our minds on something else in prayer.

You may not be able to “avoid the region altogether,” whatever that congested region may be. But maybe, just maybe, you can take a moment to pray for the grace to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can and should, and the wisdom to know the difference.