No Dancing Today

Pope Francis died this morning in Rome.

Tonight’s dancing workshop at St. Andrew’s Ravelston Catholic Church parish rooms in Edinburgh is therefore cancelled.

I have spent a lot of time this morning thinking, praying, seeking advice, and sending messages. It is not an easy thing to cancel an event, however small, after looking forward to it for weeks. (25 years ago, I would have had a handy phone list and just called everyone directly.) It is also hard to put aside long-awaited Easter joy. This was supposed to be a week of boundless glee and fervent celebrations.

Then there is the gap between generational expectations: for my mother’s generation, a papal death would mean mass cancellations, obviously. My niece’s generation would, I think, be surprised and perhaps a little aggrieved at being asked to mourn. Generation X? Caught between the two.

The best decision is to cancel the workshop and pray for Pope Francis’s soul. Today is not a happy day for any believing Catholic. Those who thought he was a jolly, liberal old grandpa will miss him (or MSM stories about him) and those who didn’t are shaking in our shoes. (On top of that, it has been a long papacy of shocks and disappointments for those of us who love the Traditional Latin Mass.) Whereas Easter is normally “a time to dance,” today is a “a time to mourn.”

We can and will dance on Easter Friday.

Meanwhile, this is another illustration for would-be dance parties impresario of the importance of flexibility. When you plan an event, anything can happen. Having discovered yesterday I had no ceilidh dance callers for today, I had secured a new one. But there’s no workaround for a papal death.