Happy Easter and all things made new

Happy Easter to our loyal readers!

  Sorry for the gap; I was traveling out of the country to the UK on business.  BP and I attended a weeknight evensong at Westminster Abbey and Palm Sunday at York Minster.  We also visited Liverpool Cathedral which is very large and to my eye, not very pretty.  But then, after York not much is!

 Since returning I've attended much of the Triduum services to serve as church photographer.  Pretty funny for your tame atheist,  but there we are.

 I hope that the Lenten and Easter experience has been a good one for you.  May we all greet the new day with peaceful hearts, even tempers, and resolution to do justice in the world.

Complacency, Complicity and the Cross

I read once that if you ask Frenchmen of a certain age what they did in the War, a large number will claim to have worked for the Resistance. However, nowhere near that number actually did. It's human nature to claim the heroic after the fact, isn't it? When at the time itself, we were far more likely to be keeping our heads down, if not actually complicit in the activities around us.

During the Good Friday service, I thought a lot about this. At St Paul's Cathedral San Diego, the Passion is chanted, and the role of the crowd is played by the choir. This is very lovely musically, but as BP and I discussed on the way out, it misses the point. Really, the congregation should be singing those words: "Crucify him!" We all like to think that we would have been amongst the 11 loyal disciples. It is far more likely that we would have been keeping our heads down at home, if not actually in the mob demanding death for this challenging political prisoner.

Good Friday brings these thoughts into focus. Too often we become complacent about what is done for us, what is suffered for us, for our easy lives. Whether it's the suicidal workers in China who manufacture our beloved iPhones, the animals that suffer brutally to bring us cheap meat, the migrant workers picking the vegetables in hot sun, we manage to keep the suffering out of sight, out of mind.

When they carried in a big cross on Friday, and thumped it down in the chancel, I thought about complacency and complicity. Given that Christianity's major icon is an ancient torture device, it's remarkable how many of people really don't grapple with its true function until Good Friday. And then, too many of us leave that torture in the past. It's Easter! We're celebrating!

Except that around us, the crucifixion is still taking place.

This is an image from Abu Ghraib, where our military abused and tortured and killed people. The soldier might as well be wearing a Roman tunic and holding a spear. It is our flag on his shoulder. They blamed "rogue soldiers", but continuing abuse elsewhere suggests that this is a systemic brutalization of and by our military.  And what happens when that soldier comes home?

What about the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay, held for years without trial? The latest news tells us of suicides and further brutalization, as we hold these people prisoner indefinitely without trial.

This is waterboarding. If performed on Americans, it is torture. If performed on foreigners, it is "enhanced interrogation." No American who has used it has been charged.

The CIA snatches people off the street and sends them to be tortured, a policy called "extraordinary rendtion". They are often the "wrong" person. Yet torturing the "right" person is still torture.

I know it's Easter, and everyone is celebrating the Resurrection.   But I suggest to you that part of its message is to truly claim the role of disciple and bring Easter to others who are still in the dark.  Not by evangelizing "traditionally", but by actively working for peace and justice.  Not in complacency, where these things are "out of sight, out of mind" but by active mindfulness of what is being done in our name.  And doing justice in His.

Hear endeth my sermon.

Update:  as Grandmere Mimi says in the comments, We Christians would do well to live our lives in remembrance that every day is Good Friday, and every day is Easter. Oh, and every day is Christmas, too. All around us crucifixions, resurrections, and incarnations happen every day. 

And for those of us not Christians, these ancient stories still have something to tell us.

Palm Sunday in America

So here we are, contemplating what it means. The hypocrites who welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, only to turn on him thereafter . The hard business of living the Gospel. (I observe that the likelihood of so living seems inversely proportional to the loudness with which one claims to be doing so. But I digress.)

Beloved swung the thurible today. By all reports, she did well on this, her first Sunday morning solo. I am very proud.

Then we crossed the street to "Earth Day" celebrations in Balboa Park, which ostensibly supports GREEN-ness. But it's a free speech zone, where as you walk from one section to the other, there are hordes of photos from the anti-abortion peoople. Signs warn you to watch your kids, but there's not much to do (though some enterprising folks had a PEACE rainbow flag to try to distract the young ones). You literally cannot escape the images...on an otherwise "family friendly" day in the park.

So, they love children, trying to traumatize them? How are they on care for the poor? I suspect their interest in children ends at parturition.

Left me feeling very combative.

Then we walked past one of the (many) evangelical stands. An earnest man with pamphlets approached till I took BP's hand. He recoiled, visibly. And she still smelt of lovely incense. Go figure.

Holy Smoke

A year ago at this time, my wife was preparing to be received into The Episcopal Church, having spent her whole life up till then as a Roman Catholic.

Part of that process included coursework, and an "instructed Eucharist" where the candidates for confirmation/ reception/ reaffirmation took on all the roles of the Mass (that a lay person can do). They were asked for 3 choices of roles to play. BP chose 1-thurifer, 2-thurifer, and 3-thurifer. The Cathedral uses incense every week for Mass (except during Lent), as well as Sunday Evensong. Along with the high choral service, incense is something both of us enjoy, and BP was pleased by the possibility of swinging the thurible. Following that, she finished the class and was received at Easter.

This last year, BP began serving as an acolyte and as a thurifer-in-training, generally boating for the regular thurifer as she shadowed him or her. (For those who don't know smoke-speak, the boat is the little container of extra incense for refueling the thurible, and if it isn't carried by the thurifer, the one who carries it is called Boat.)

BP and I both grew up RC in an era when girls had no formal role in church, and it has been wonderful watching her grow into this new role of service. As she approaches the first anniversary of her reception, appropriately enough she is almost fully fledged with the Smoke.

At Sunday Evensong, BP had her first real thurifer solo. Evensong is shorter than Sunday Eucharist and is where the thurifers do their final polishing. She's on the list to do the procession at Palm Sunday. I think it is marvelous that her first full service as thurifer is likely to be Easter.

Welcome home, honey.

Oh, for a muse of fire....reflections on our Triduum

When they lit the brazier at the back of the darkened Cathedral on Saturday night to begin the Vigil, Shakespeare's opening line to Henry V came to mind. (No doubt in part because of the atavistic, elemental nature of the image--fire, darkness, ancient robes and rhythms). How paltry my own words are to describe our experience this week! To me, it felt like an episodic drama, in which we were ourselves both players and audience in an inexorable narrative. Due to work responsibilities, we were unable to attend Wednesday's Tenebrae, so we began with the solemnities of Maundy Thursday.

This installment of course is full of shadows and foreboding, yet with the warmth of a most intimate service between people. At the Cathedral, the footwashing is mutual; everyone came up to have their feet washed, and in turn, to wash the feet of the person next in line. There was great tenderness and kindness there, and deep reflection.

Knowing I am a bit of a shutterbug, one of our Cathedral friends asked me to be one of the photographers, so I got to play a role that suits me well: the backstage observer, crouched under a rail, able to be of service even while not fully part of the event. The faces were amazing: some people looking fixedly at the person bathing their feet, others with a distant expression, some at peace, some fierce with expectation. My poor camera was challenged by the low light though I managed a few wonderful images. BP found it deeply moving, particularly in the give-and-get of playing both parts (a few days later, seeing her footwasher, she greeted him with a great hug). As the service concluded, the clergy stripped the altar to leave it bare for the next day.

For the Good Friday service, the spare emptiness was accentuated. On the altar, the clergy wore their deep purple cathedral cassocks--no white surplices, no white albs. The voices singing the Passion were spectacular, their beauty contrasting with the grimness of their tale. And when the Dean, who is a big man, carried the cross up the aisle, I think no one breathed. When he dropped it into its holder with a sharp crack, there was a shudder. And then, in ones and twos, a few people came up to kneel in front, some holding their hands tightly clasped, others reaching out to touch it with their fingertips. (Again, I was asked to play photographer; it was kind to give me something useful to do).

Then came the Vigil. We went out to dinner ahead of time with the kids and were seated in our assigned pew well ahead of time. BP's classmates who were to be confirmed, received, or reaffirmed (about 25 of them, plus a few baptisms) had that undercurrent of excitement of graduation. The stage management was masterful, beginning with that brazier of fire, and then the huge vast space of the Cathedral lit by individual candles (though I did have a moment considering the risks of immolation! :-) When the "class" went up to the altar, in the flickering candlelight, I was so proud of BP!

Now, both BP and I were confirmed Roman Catholic in the 8th grade. Our kids were confirmed in the 10th grade. We all remember that our RC confirmation was a bit of an assembly line -- tracing a cross on the forehead, a few rote words, and next, please! BP found this experience quite different and deeply moving. The Bishop took her hands, as he spoke to her, then touched her face. He looked deep in her eyes ("like he was looking into my soul," she reported later) and made this a very personal moment.

The solemnity broke as the lights came up (though there was no easy sermon from the Dean, who as usual challenged any comfortable complacency) and the choir went forward in full voice, as did the impressive organ. After it ended, we all went to the great hall for a joyous reception of champagne and sweet snacks. BP asked the bishop to sign her BCP, and posed for the standard picture-with-Bishop. And so, finally, home--both metaphorically and physically. And here we are.

And so it begins

It's only been in the last year and a half that I have lived my life to the rhythm of a liturgical calendar. Not that I was unaware of it, but when BP was a Roman Catholic, I didn't go with her to church (nothing is as militantly anti-Catholic as an ex-Catholic atheist!), so I did not experience it in the same way. I referred to myself as the Church Widow and found Easter week quite tedious since I spent much of it apart from my spouse.

Now, however, I go with her to church so I have the sense of weekly continuity in a community, as well as the ebb and flow of the liturgical year. And as we gear up for this year's Holy Week, that is especially apparent as we both have heightened senses of awareness since she will be received on Saturday. Of course, I do take a more removed view of the whole thing which I experience in a narrative, not spiritual sense.

The Cathedral had an enthusiastic Palm Sunday service today, with a long procession around the block (escorted by San Diego's Finest) and a Samba band and dancers. There were long streamers, and banners, and more than 200 parishioners waving palm fronds and they processed to Jerusalem. So what's with doing the preview of the Passion on Palm Sunday? Seems to jump past the party and the enthusiasm straight to the end, without the deliberate pace of the entirety of Holy Week. I'm with MadPriest, who writes,

I have decided to do Holy Week this year as I think it should be done and damn tradition. I started today by completely ditching the Passion bit of Palm Sunday and going back to the Book of Common Prayer's template of today concentrating on Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem. I remember, when I was a kid, that Palm Sunday was a joyous day with lots of "Hosannas!" I also remember how intense the betrayal of Christ a few days later felt when shown up against the jubilation of Palm Sunday. The Catholic insistence on getting the entrance to Jerusalem over and done with before the service proper so that most of the time can be spent on the trial and crucifixion of Christ completely buggers up this stark contrast between joy and sorrow as you leave church on Palm Sunday feeling just sadness and guilt.

I knew I was right! So drama-wise, I'm going to try to ignore that flash-forward of the Passion we heard today, and focus on the here-and-now narrative vector of Maundy Thursday, Holy Friday, and the Saturday Vigil. That strikes me as the way to tell the story.

At least this year I get to spend it with my wife.

Jesus said.... (video)