Foreword In the most extraordinary of times, the North American Academy of Liturgy held its 2022 Annual Meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, USA from 2–5 January. KCMO, heartland of Jazz and BBQ, Paris of the Plains, welcomed us warmly despite frigid weather. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic meant, however, that most of the membership kept to the hospitality of the Westin at Crown Center and that no excursions into the city were planned for the full membership. After the pandemic necessitated the cancellation of the 2021 Annual Meeting, it was a joy to gather. A respectable yet much diminished number of members attended in person, while many others attended virtually. Eighteen seminars assembled, most a mix of virtual and face-to-face, but some fully online. Plenary sessions, prayer, breakfast, receptions, and banquet took place as well, but with some social distancing. Vice-President Todd E. Johnson’s address To Be Determined looked to the Academy’s origins to consider its future, reminding us that our origins were “attentive to context and culture, performance and symbol, and the work of God outside of the bounds of religion,” and that, “we ought to consider that legacy very seriously.” In “Crucifixus, Canon Missae, et Communio Sanctorum: An Autobiographical Hodayah,” Berakah recipient Maxwell E. Johnson—most ably introduced by Stefanos Alexopoulos—took us on a tour of an unparalleled life and career in liturgical studies. “Living on the ecumenical border” yielded diverse fruit, benefiting generations of liturgical scholars, including many Academy members. In one of the most poignant (and entertaining) Berakah addresses in memory, Max put forward a crucial call to commit once again to the heart of what it means to be who we are: I…want to say that living on and frequently crossing various borders may well be an apt description for us as liturgical scholars, who have devoted ourselves ecumenically to building not walls but bridges between our diverse communities… I would like to suggest that ecumenism, as a constitutive hallmark of our academy, is part of that very process of mestizaje as we ourselves become shaped, mixed, and changed into new people by our encounters with one another and, ultimately, through this, by our encounter with the Holy One who dwells among us… May walls continue to be torn down and open borders continue to be crossed as we commit ourselves to building bridges.
President Gennifer Brooks, in her report, recounted the colossal challenges posed by the pandemic for the Academy’s meeting plans and offered thanks to those pivotal in keeping the NAAL on track for 2022. For her wise leadership over the V
