Michaelmas and the Holy Mackerel
Merry Michaelmas, all.
Our household effects were delivered Friday. This deluge of belongings, which I called “stressful Christmas” in an earlier note, turned out to go rather smoothly, despite the heavy rain. The team that delivered it was extremely cheerful, efficient, and professional, and departed by early afternoon, with assurances to return to later to haul away more of our unboxing detritus.
Not unlike the liturgical year, these are the tasks of the autumnal season following a summer move for many Foreign Service families: wrestling beauty, order, and a vision of home from within the chaos of stuff and furniture. As in past years, we aim to be materially settled — with pictures hanging from the walls — by Thanksgiving.
So, accepting the demands of the season, we have been unboxing and negotiating what goes where. We are discovering how half the rugs we own don’t work well in this space, but discovering that some others do. We know we need a coat tree. There is a riotous corner of books, piled like a snow drift, waiting to be placed on a shelf.
The whole process engages every muscle of body and brain. This weekend, we aimed to direct as much of our attention to settling the kids’ rooms, which on Friday night looked like two little beds in steerage surrounded with high piles of boxes. By bedtime Saturday night, they slept in far materially calmer quarters. Last night, I was worn out from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet.
On waking, I headed out to a nearby grocery to pick up some baked goods - tebirkes, covered in poppyseeds; flax-seed studded grovbirkes; and some baguettes. I also splurged for a kanelstang (a cinnamon stick, twig, pole, or rod in various translations) and, yes, indeed, a smoked mackerel. On this feast day, it was for me a holy mackerel. (And to be clear, while other members of my family were open to a nibble or two, I was mostly the only one interest in it, head to tail.)
Of the many homey treasures we have unwrapped in the last 48 hours, we are very exceptionally happy to have our bicycles. These really came in handy when we decided to get out to Denmark’s one and only Anglican Church, St. Alban’s, for their morning service, getting there far faster than we ever could by foot. It was sweet to enter a space in which the feast day was acknowledged. I needed to hear the scripture passages featuring angelic hosts, and a reminder of greater spiritual realities than just my own narrow anxieties.
So, merry Michaelmas, all. I’ve written about this before, but about a decade ago, I wrote about how angels figure into our theologies of work. I’d also point you to Malcolm Guite’s wonderful sonnet for this day (you can hear him read it; follow along here), and find fresh courage to “trace the hidden grace in change and chance.” I’m leaning hard on those words in this season.