I was prepared for this morning to be like all those other Sunday mornings. Not that the other Sunday mornings are bad, mind you. Any time 'two or more are gathered', etc.

But worship had gotten a little...predictable, shall we say, for which I feel ultimately responsible. After all, I'm the one who plans it, leads it, pretty much is in charge of it. (Yes, that is a problem in itself, but it is not the subject of this post. Another time.)

Today was the final Sunday for Church School, which means of course that there is a population of the congregation that I will not see again until September, namely anyone under 13, and their parents. For the next 14 or so Sundays I will prepare a "time with young disciples", and there will probably be 9 or so of those Sundays in which I will be the youngest disciple in the building.

There is a teacher at St. Stoic who has carried the Church School program for the past 14 years. She has also chosen and directed the Christmas program for most of those 14 years. She is very, very valuable to the life of St. Stoic. She is also the person who was the ringleader on the stairwell that day, the day I started to really doubt myself, the first time I really felt unsafe in my own church building. I have been getting nasty, hateful looks and short terse answers from her ever since that day. One day she growled at me that after her last day teaching, she would "never set foot in that church again".

She retired today from teaching. I wanted her to feel appreciated for all she has done, so I planned a little surprise in her honor, and had the kids who had been in Sunday school at any time in the past 14 years write her notes, make cards, draw pictures--so she could have something more concrete than my silly words of thank you on this day. Something she could hold in her hand, and re-read, over and over again. It wasn't much, but I still wanted her to have something.

When I handed her that bag of notes, cards, etc., I saw something on her face--something I had never seen in her before. It was love.

I don't often use words to describe evil or demons, because that kind of faith language has such negative connotations from my upbringing. When clergy friends I know use such language, I ask lots of questions to try to figure out what they mean by those words. By the same token, I don't use the word "Victory" because of its war-like shades of meaning. I'm afraid of conjuring up images of "Christus Victor".

That is why it is difficult for me to put it into words, but I felt as if something evil had been defeated today. It seemed as if Light was victorious over darkness when she looked at me.

Everything seemed different after that. I don't know how, and I dont know why, and I don't know if I will ever see it again, but something shifted back into place, something that had been off-kilter for months.

I hope she comes back.