In the church where I was baptized and confirmed a story circulated about a parishioner who, it was said, went to church only on Ash Wednesday and on Good Friday. This believer, whom I never met, has never been far from my mind. Understatement appeals to me and I admire her penitence, while recognizing the difficulty of organizing a community around her kind of minimal, idiosyncratic participation.

If I were to choose but one day in the year to go to church it would be Maundy Thursday. There is something about the liturgy of that day that puts me in touch with my roots, both as a church member and as a person. I was baptized and confirmed in Lent, not long before Holy Week. In a stark, visible and dramatic way, the Maundy Thursday observance re-presents the dark and somber, yet joyful events that make up the bedrock of who we are and what we do, not only on Sunday but also on every other day in the year. Here we find ourselves and each other.