Lost Calendar

I've lost my calendar.
Not the datebook I carry with me, not the appointment calendar on my desk, not the scenic wall calendar, or the page-a-day calendar on my dresser nor the one on my Google page or my doc mac site, but the one I've carried in my head for the last two decades. I've lost my mental liturgical calendar, that internal sense of seasons and Sundays that created the rhythm of my weeks and months and years as pastor and preacher.
As one who had the primary responsibility for planning the worship and community life of a particular congregation, I had to carry in my head multiple calendars. At the same time I was dealing with day to day events and preparing for the next Sunday, I had to plan ahead for the next months, the next season, the next holiday. During December, in the midst of Advent and the build up to celebrating Christmas, catalogues would arrive for ordering materials for Lent and Easter. Late winter was almost too late to plan summer activities. By the time school began, folks wanted to know what we would be doing for Christmas.
Whatever the season, Sunday to Sunday served as my markers for the passage of time. That's why I always knew the days of the month that fell on Sundays. The advice given me by an retired pastor proved to be spot on: "Just remember, a pastor's week goes like this - Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday." The relentless march of Sundays demand another sermon, another set of prayers and hymns, another week of preparing and anticipating and build up, and as soon as the service ends, another round begins of getting ready for the next Sunday.
One of the reasons for embarking on this extended sabbatical was to step away from that never-ending responsibility. In a sense, I have stepped out of time, or at least no longer dance to a particular rhythm called liturgical calendar. I knew I'd lost my calendar when the week before Thanksgiving I had to look up the date for the First Sunday of Advent. Nor do I know in what month Easter will be in the Spring.
I've also lost the rhythm of the weekly lectionary, the 3-year cycle of Scripture readings which combines both semi-continuous readings through particular books and seasonally specific passages. When preaching week after week, one is also studying those books and those passages week after week - and always with an awareness of what's coming up in the next weeks and months. Preaching the lectionary becomes one continuous spiral of reading and re-reading - and reading ahead, telling and re-telling the stories that make up The Story. Now that I'm preaching as a guest only once a month or less, and in unfamiliar settings, it feels more like flying in and out from one set of readings to another rather than arriving after a cross country trip. I've missed all the terrain in between.
Now that I know I've lost my calendar, I've realized that I need to find a new one. I must find another rhythm and learn a new dance of days and seasons.