The Bad with the Good Friday

     Maybe it's a good thing to have a bad experience on your last day in a place you love, so leaving is easier. Though, as "bad" goes...
     I calculated the bus schedule carefully to make it to the Good Friday service at Christ Church PCA, Santa Fe. The bus placed me there half an hour early, so I sat in the sanctuary and listened to the "chorale" practice. A couple of people said good morning to me, but I thought a stranger at Pine Ridge probably would have been engaged in conversation. Maybe it's different at regular services. The pastor came over and addressed me by a name I didn't know. I told him I'd never been there before. I learned later that I resembled an artist who sometimes came to services with a hat over her long hair. I rather liked that. 
     The service was about as different as it could have been from PRPCA, thoroughly liturgical, some of the scripture readings done in a singsong, like I've only heard in Episcopal services before. The pastor broke a large wafer as he introduced Eucharist. (We pass a tray of torn pita bread for the Lord's Supper.) People went forward to take a piece of wafer and dip it in a chalice. 
     I told the pastor afterward how different it was, though the same Spirit, and that Pastor Bill would have choked up at the same points that he did. (He knew Pastor Bill's name from General Assembly.) I also told him I'd learned something. He'd said in the service that Barabbas was probably not a popular figure with the Jews--- more of a Timothy McVeigh than an Ethan Allen. To me, that made it all the more significant that the people chose him over Jesus. Total innocence versus destructive violence? Give us original sin. 
     So far, so good. I walked around the corner to catch the bus back to town, found the bus stop sign readily, and settled in to wait the twenty or so minutes. It turned cloudy and breezy, and it was pretty cold. Finally saw the bus coming, pulled out my day pass... and watched the bus drive by. It was the right route number at the right time, but it did not stop. I raised my hands in disbelief. There wouldn't be another bus for an hour, so rather than wait, I started walking. A good mile. On rough dirt, gravel and uneven sidewalks. In boots. They're good boots, but still. I wore a hole in my silk sock liner. (Thin socks worn under the wool hiking socks to avoid blisters, marketed to serious hikers and campers. And old ladies with difficult feet.) 

     The funny thing is, I couldn't work up a good "mad" over being jilted by Santa Fe Trails. I'd just listened to a service based on the stations of the cross. This was hardly a Via Dolorosa. Just a Via Inconvenienta. A certain Spirit was helping me keep perspective. I did take another nifty door photo. And the socks were old ones anyway.