Diary of an itinerant priest

My Sunday begins and ends with breakfast.

I am awake before 5:00, having slept fitfully. I’m normally a sound sleeper, and I’ve learned not to let the occasional bad night bother me too much (though anyone who had happened to walk past me singing “Awake, awake, to love and work” would have received an unpleasant look). I’d been putting off my grocery shopping, so I knew supplies for breakfast would be skimpy, but I was certain I could make something decent. Having lots of extra time, I went for a crustless quiche recipe for which I had nearly everything I needed. I could improvise a bit.

Pro tip. Well, amateur tip. Before you sauté your onions and garlic in olive oil and start stirring in other ingredients, make sure you have enough eggs. Because when it turns out that you don’t, you will produce an oily, garlicky assault on the concept of scrambled eggs, and it will be disgusting.

And you will arrive at church hungry, and not altogether gruntled.

Redeeming the time, I also made a quick trip to Safeway for cleaning supplies. The apartment was desperately in need of cleaning, and I had hoped to start the work week with a clean apartment and my laundry done.

Oh, right. I’d also been putting off cleaning and laundry. My apartment has a strange washer/dryer combo (just one tub, not one of those stackables) whose capacity is as minute as its operation is complex. Even with the help of the online owners’ manual, I have not succeeded in penetrating its dark, German secrets. But eventually I have to have clean clothes. So I get a wash cycle started that is supposed to take 3 1/2 hours for some reason. (It is also then supposed to followed by a dryer cycle that begins with no further intervention on my part. This, it will turn out, does not happen). I have not timed my shopping, cleaning, and laundering quite right, so I am reduced to taking a cab to church instead of walking.

My current nemesis.

Church is Choral Matins at St Paul’s, K Street. They do Choral Matins once a year, in celebration of their Feast of Dedication. Why do we not do Choral Matins? It’s a great service. And no, I don’t mean Morning Prayer as the principal service on Sunday where you have to do all the Eucharistic readings, which is a creature of necessity and a shapeless mess. I mean proper Choral Matins. It was great, the choir was wonderful, we had incense and copes and proper sung canticles, and the whole thing took only forty minutes.

That gave me time to go up to the parish hall to scrounge some sustenance from what would be the parish lunch after . . .

Second Church, which was Solemn High Mass at the same parish. Once again the choir was wonderful, and there was much rejoicing. And I’ll go a long way for Vaughan Williams in G minor. The preacher was the Canon to the Ordinary, who is in charge of (among other things) licensing. When I shook his hand on my way out—I ducked out of the postlude, which was Messiaen, whom I can’t abide—I said, “I think my license has expired.” “I believe it has,” he replied.

I’ll need to renew it before my itinerancy comes to a close.

I walked from K Street down to Filomena, an Italian restaurant I’d been meaning to try for a while. A critical judge might think it’s trying a little too hard for that Ye Olde Worlde Italian look and feel; the kitschy and extremely exuberant Halloween decorations did not exactly add to a feeling of refinement and elegance. But I thought the food was really quite good. (Insalata di fragole and agnolotti alla carbonara, if it matters. Portions are huge. I have dinner for tomorrow night, and perhaps the night after that.) And I noticed on my way out that the knot of patrons leaving just in front of me were all speaking Italian.

Then I backtracked a bit to pick up the new suit to which I had had minor alterations done. The first time I appeared in the store was happenstance, and I was wearing workout clothes. This time I was unpresentable again, just on the other end of the spectrum. The suit I had worn to church had simply not survived my post-gym-enthusiasm body changes; there’s only so much a tailor can do. Let’s just say I was not the look that store is going for.

When I got home, I tossed the suit in one of the Hefty bags I had bought at Safeway that morning.

I also turned on the dryer, which again was supposed to take 3 1/2 hours.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough how small this load was.

I continued with my cleaning and worked in a call with my Mom that I hadn’t managed on Saturday. Which brings us, at last to . . .

Third Church. Choral Evensong at Christ Church, Georgetown. This time I had allowed myself time to walk down from Dupont Circle. It’s about a half-hour walk, and the weather is very pleasant. As always, Evensong was lovely, and the reception afterward was elegant and friendly.

Having attended Choral Matins, Solemn High Mass, and Choral Evensong in one day, I thought I had reached Peak Episcopalian, but no, there was one further step. I was making a new acquaintance at the reception. “I did a master’s degree in church history,” she told me; “I wrote a thesis on Bishop John Henry Hobart.” ”NO WAY!” I acted the way a normal person would act if they were talking to someone who turned out to be a roadie for Taylor Swift. “HE’S MY FAVORITE EPISCOPALIAN OF ALL TIME!”

I walked back to Dupont Circle in a contented frame of mind. Contented, that is, apart from the memory that I had nothing for breakfast in the morning. Not even coffee. What I should do, obviously, is take a short detour to Safeway to pick up things for breakfast. But what a pain. It’s late (ish), it’s getting dark, and I just generally don’t want to. But tomorrow-me will be very annoyed with right-now-me if I get up and there’s no breakfast.

So, with much inward grumbling, I make the detour and buy what I need for breakfast.

I get home, and the dryer is still running.