Queen's Funeral Day Melancholia

 I felt oddly melancholy yesterday; it was a beautiful end of summer kind of day, and my life perks along nicely.  Why the melancholy?

There was ongoing coverage of Queen Elizabeth's funeral, but that didn't make me feel sad.  I had tasks that felt overly onerous, like calling Wells Fargo bank, again, about the May 31 check fraud perpetrated against my South Florida church, that the bank still hasn't managed to straighten out.  I feel like my church has been a victim of fraud again and again:  once by the people who wrote fraudulent checks, and again and again by the fraud department that cannot seem to return the thousands of dollars that flowed out of the account even after we alerted Wells Fargo that the fraud had happened.

I spent much of the day working on an exegesis assignment for my Foundations of Preaching class.  It's got lots of parts, but it's not too onerous once I got working on it.  I still have a bit to go, but class isn't until 6:30.

I went on two walks, both pleasant.  So why my Monday sadness?

I had gone back to check out some dates to make sure I was remembering events properly.  I did it in the way I often do, by going to old blog postings.  You would think that seeing where I was a year ago, in a school with compromised technology and a lack of transparency about the future, you'd think those posts would make me happy to be somewhere else.  

And indeed, they did, but they also made me sad.  I remembered all the happy times, the times of appreciation from my students, the times when we made festivals--sometimes we had much in the way of resources, and some times we had very little, but every effort helped to form community.  And I felt sad yesterday, remembering what was lost.

I also felt sad for all the people treated so shabbily.  I want to believe we've all gone on to better things, but it's impossible to forget the pain and disruption.

So, yesterday I spent time at the edge of a melancholy vortex that wanted to pull me under.  This morning, I'm feeling better.  I made this Facebook post/tweet:

"Listening to The Smiths' "The Queen is Dead" (the full album) while making apple butter to go with yesterday's homemade bread and sorting photos from my walk to St. Columba's Episcopal church, as one does, the day after the queen's funeral."

And while I'm documenting, here's my favorite queen's death/funeral tweet so far:

Thomas William Ruston

@thomaswruston

·

12h

A funeral watched by 5.1billion people owes itself to people trained in disciplines the government thinks is worthless: theology, poetry, music, camerawork and media