Easter

Easter has come and gone, somewhat anticlimactically. The Holy Week was filled with services, but it's hard for me to attend, between work and children. I did make it to a Monday evening Taizé service--about which more later; that was fascinating.

As to the big day itself, I'd suggested plans to a friend before I realized they fell on Easter, and then I felt bad about canceling. So I attended the 8 a.m. service instead of my usual, the 11 a.m.

Each service at our church has its own nature. The 9 a.m. is oriented toward children and their families. The children's choir sings, and everyone gathers around in a big circle for the Eucharist. Since I have young children, I feel that I should enjoy it, but I don't. I prefer more formality in my service, and I love the grand organ music of my service, the 11 a.m. The 11 sees many more older folks, but more young families have begun attending regularly.

I'd long wanted to try the 8 a.m. because it is Rite I, not Rite II, which I understood to be more formal in nature and without song. Attendance is sparse and also older. As it turned out there was a little singing, but not as much, and no choir; so, especially given that there weren't many of us, the music from the congregation was much more uncertain without its guidance. (The leadership did its best to shepherd us along by singing powerfully, which I appreciated.) The smaller amount of music makes the whole service much faster, only an hour.

The rite didn't actually seem all that different, but referred more often to the prayerbook instead of laying the details out in the program (or should I say spoon-feeding them to us, heh). Many of the attendees seemed to have memorized the rite, anyway. (I've often thought it would be nice to have memorized the basics--it would make it easier to concentrate on the language and prayer--but I'm not there yet.)

I missed my regular service: the people, the organ, the choir. I wished I was there for the baptisms taking place that day. And, perhaps because it was 8 a.m. and I'd had no time for coffee rushing out the door, I didn't feel very present. The service felt over and done before I'd had time to settle in.

It was a revelation to realize how much I appreciate the singing music. Sometimes I get a little tired of all the song midway through the 11 a.m. service. Sometimes I just want to sit in silence. But I guess it does give me time to think, process, or to just be, in between the speaking bits.

(I've always been clear on how much the organist's playing means to me. The organist, a canon, is a fundamental part of the church right now. He directs the adult and childrens' choirs, both of which are excellent and are real magnets for participation and attendance. After each service he plays a piece, usually Bach. There is nothing like the grandness of an organ to hear that baroque music, played with great skill echoing through the cathedral is a form of worship all in itself. I told him that if I didn't attend church for the worship, I would come just for his music.)

Let me be clear: I liked the service, but I just wanted the luxury of my 11 a.m. routine. The altar was done up beautifully, with whole flowering trees and forsythia and daffodil making a little garden, and an overwhelming profusion of blooms arranged into a little hill, as well as enormous bouquets festooning the pulpit and the sides of the later. The sermon was riveting, our priest's story of his recovery from polio--his own personal resurrection.

But look at all these details. I'm shying away from the central point, aren't I? It is hard for me to think about the resurrection. As a pagan, Jesus has been the most complicated part of my entry into Christianity. I do best thinking about Jesus in the historical Borg/Crossan style, or metaphorically. But even metaphor is a little challenging for me, here.

I have noticed, recently, that this investigation of the church feels like blossoming. I feel like I am opening up to something, in a lovely way. Pagans celebrate Easter as the Spring Equinox, on March 21st, when there is an equal amount of light and dark. On their Easter they emphasize fertility and springtime as the (Northern Hemisphere) moves out of the dark and into the light. Easter eggs and bunny rabbits, of course, are the icons of fertility that remind even Christians of those long-ago associations.

But this blooming is a slow and gradual process for me. The words "He is Risen," as emblazoned on our lovely church banner, are still foreign to me. I like to think of Christ as a woman--an awful heresy in many circles, I'm sure, but our priest didn't seem to mind when I told him this. It makes it easier for me to translate into metaphors. But it doesn't help here. What does the metaphor of Easter mean to me? What do resurrection, rebirth, fertility mean, in such close connection to the humanity Christ represents? These words make me feel creaky and slow and muddy-minded. I don't feel a connection to them in my heart.

I didn't realize all this until after Easter Sunday, when I started trying to write this post. But, in a burst of fantastic synchronicity (worth a post in its own--so perhaps more on that later, too) I am already signed up for a class at Abbey of the Arts that couldn't be more perfect for exploring these thoughts. The course description: "This 5-Week E-Course for the Easter Season invites you to practice resurrection through contemplative encounters with creation." I came across Abbey of the Arts just a couple weeks ago and it was almost a spiritual experience to read the website. The Abbey is created and run by Christine Valters Painter, a Christian and Benedictine Oblate, who links her faith closely to nature. Her perspective is almost pagan. There was someone like me out there! The knowledge and website alone were an enormous relief to me, and then it was an additional gift to see how much material (courses, books, thought) there was for me there. The course interested me purely for its focus on the elements; when I received the book and began reading I was filled with gratitude--it is all I could have hoped and more. I began reading and immediately fell into a meditation linking God and Air that have stayed with me since and provided much food for thought. To now anticipate the further gift of the perspective on Easter... my cup runneth over.

The course starts April 18th, and I can't wait. In the meantime I will be thinking about that profusion of flowers, and what does it mean to me to say, "He is Risen"?