Holy Days in the Apple Pi Inn: Maunday Thursday

“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. “John 13:3-5

There’s a towel hanging in Mary Jane Bee’s kitchen. She was my great great grandmother who owned this hotel (now Apple Pi Inn) from 1875 to 1883. It started out as a cloth calendar, a means of telling time. It tells more than that, but I’ll let my Mother fill in some of the details. On the back of the frame she wrote, “Embroidered by Winifred Eleanor (Bee) Hoyt Murray. I used an old calendar’s illustration (1984) but when it was readied, the glass broke. In May 1986, Floyd of Roberts’ store cut a glass for it. Bob Murray helped put it in the frame on June 2, 1986 which his grandson Murray Mace had painted the week before.”

This is what I know: my mother embroidered a cloth calendar that many women used as dish towels after the year was over. What I don’t know is why. Was it because she loved the dogwood blossoms? Was the prayer one she needed to see every day? Did she know it was written by Reinhold Niebuhr? Did my father tell her he learned it as a soldier during World War II and the Korean War? It was in the Federal Council of Churches prayer book provided for army chaplains and servicemen in 1944. Did she find the calendar/towel at the Salvation Army? Did those who read it on the kitchen wall know they were in the company of AA and all prayer warriors who fight against addiction? This is one prayer they frame in their hearts.

I don’t know the answer to these questions. But what I do know is that I wouldn’t name this calendar/towel the “Serenity Prayer”. This kind of language is risky business. Be careful what you pray for. A towel is what I have to tie around myself if I want to follow Jesus? This is the only vestment of ministry I will be measured by: a towel? Even harder to admit for those of us who are addicted to being in charge, those of us who need to be needed, is the towel's dirty Not-Secret: Someone else will have to wash our feet.

So there it hangs: the hardest prayer, the tie that binds.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; 
Courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Do I hear an Amen?

Holy One, embroider this prayer on my heart.