From the sublime to the ridiculous (or, Christ is Risen - Yeh)

Christ is Risen!

It fascinates me that many of us mortals are highly complex. (The trouble is that, when I meet those who are basically simple, including 98% of Franciscans of course, I tend to take this for a wry joke, but that's another topic for another post.) I'm laughing at myself even more than usual this week. I'm an irreverent (if pious) peasant with very high-brow tastes in liturgy and music - renaissance lady who loves the salty talk of the pub - at once totally Romantic and flavoured with the pragmatism which dominates in nearly everyone in my family - I could go on, but I think you get the picture. For anyone new to this blog (...only the chronically over-religious are repeat visitors...), I'll comment that I tend to forget, since it is so much a part of me, that I'm really into the liturgy, scriptures, and theological writings, to the point where many of my gestures are based on these. I've caught on that this isn't totally universal. I know better by now than to 'greet one another with a holy kiss' unless I'm amongst Italian Franciscans (there are breeds of Christian who'll take this as an attempt to make them), and I don't try to reconcile with anyone before Communion (because they are likely to hang out on the Internet and think this is manipulative.) Yet I still forget that not everyone is going to greet other Christians, from now till Trinity Sunday, with "Christ is Risen!"

I get so wrapped in liturgy that those who know my irreverent side may mistake this for being theatrical. I wept a good deal last week - during the Palm Sunday procession, when I saw the lilies on the cross at the Vigil, when I heard 'on the night he was betrayed' on Wednesday (though I've heard those words in the Eucharistic prayer no less than 300 times a year since I was aged 12.) The services last week were utterly out of this world! I thought someone might have to find a butterfly net to get me off the ceiling, in case I levitated. (What if I floated out of turn and harmed one of the new stained glass windows, for which there was a capital campaign?)

Jumping ahead, because I'm in a silly mood today... One of my guilty pleasures is found in the Agnes Browne novels, penned by the hilarious Brendan O'Carroll. I tucked them into my bag to read on the train for my endless travelling to church last week. They are far from being great literature, but the conversations in them are some of the funniest in print, especially if (as I am indeed) one is acquainted with people who actually talk as do Brendan's characters. I genuinely do know people who, for example, would say "by the time I caught up to you, you were gone," and it's probably a bad sign that I understand exactly what they mean.

Brendan's priceless Agnes Browne uses the expression I know so well, "yeh." This is not to be mistaken for a German Ja or New York Yeah, since it means nothing (or whatever one wants it to mean.) One example of its use will be noted in telephone conversations between close family or friends. If one is phoning anyone in those categories, no "good morning" or "hello" is required when the other party answers, since decorum is unnecessary (and possibly stuffy) with intimates. It is not necessary to identify oneself, since one's voice will be assumed to be recognised at once. Ergo, when the other answers, one may merely say "yeh."

On Easter morning, a friend phoned me, and, when the caller ID made me aware it was a Christian on the other end, I naturally (...for me) answered with "Christ is Risen!" She responded, "Yeh." (That's not quite as bad as another friend who said, "Lor', Elizabeth, did I wake you up?")

I have no addiction whatever to children. (Not that I can't take individual children.... sometimes. But not en masse!) I always sit in the chantry (a little section that is a separate chapel, though it doesn't have any wall separating it from the main seating) for the Easter vigil, so I won't be cramped and can sing out. (I really do shout "The Lord is risen indeed," and I just soar on the splendid "Christus vincit!" arrangement, which has notes above the staff.) We (...thank God...) had only one baptism this year. I could handle that the baby howled throughout most of his baptism - little babies I do love. But I hadn't been banking on that relatives of said child would crowd the chantry with a host of toddlers. (My guess is that, with the vigil being so long, the little ones were hidden somewhere and just appeared for the baptism and afterwards.)

I remembered how I once heard a Church of England priest (a strong-boned, somewhat androgynous, tall woman, who nonetheless had a bell-like soprano voice like an angel) chant the Eucharistic prayer impeccably in a church where I mystery worshipped. (It never fails... let me mystery worship any place totally unfamiliar, and it will be the one Sunday of the year when there is a special service aimed at little children.) She had the kids join her around the altar during the prayer, and (being a mother, and therefore knowing all too well how tiny ones are), said, right before time, "now, I'm going to sing this prayer, and I don't want anyone doing this (and she illustrated hands clamped over the ears and giggling.)"

Naturally, at the Vigil, the kids covered their ears and giggled when I sang out "Jesus Christ is risen today," but, when I hit the high notes on the "Christus Vincit!", they not only did the ear thing but utterly cracked up. (Well, all right... I'll admit that I grinned and winked at their young mothers... who, unlike the priest I mentioned, probably were new to the game - the toddlers were probably their first children. Kids always do that, as I well know. But I almost laughed myself, remembering how an old friend of mine, also one not to suffer little children to come unto him, used to mutter, "lollipop sucking, sticky little bastards..." I didn't go so far as to make such a comment - but I'm stupid enough not to catch on that the infants hardly would have caught my own weird humour when I muttered pleasantly, and in Latin, "all you holy virgins, pray for us.")

For Easter, I utterly dressed to kill - heels (despite that my foot, on which my iron fell two weeks ago, still isn't fully healed), picture hat with a flower - so none of the Baptists, or even Jehovah's Witnesses, in my neighbourhood felt they had to pass me tracts. There are many churches in my neighbourhood. The Anglican thoroughbreds look like horses. The Catholics and Methodists look as if they are on their way to the gym or a picnic. The 'non denominational' evangelical group wear tee shirts printed with slogans that misquote the scriptures, and are just so 'happy' I wonder what they've been snorting. But the Baptists and Jehovah's Witnesses look as if they are about to have tea with the queen. (One of them cornered me not long ago, for some reason thinking I was a Muslim. I also had two at the bus stop preach at me that Satan is in control of the world. I rarely show off, but those two got an ear full, all very restrained of course, but quoting everyone from John in Greek to the patristic writers. After all, they came to me!)

I really did want to write some striking meditation on resurrection, deification, and the like today. But between "yeh," Brendan O'Carroll, the lollipop suckers, and so forth, I decided to let my silly light shine before men. I sometimes catch on that my perspective is a bit weird. (My more pragmatic relatives thought that "Easter duty" meant "putting collection," and my ultra-pragmatic father, insulted when my mother wanted him to make sacramental confession the night he was dying, filled the hospital hallway with his shouted, "Did I kill somebody? Did I steal?" How I OD'd on the mystical I do not expect to discover in this life.)

Some time ago, I made the comment on a theology forum that, however orthodox one might be (and my orthodoxy could not be questioned), one does come to realise that about the best one could hope for is that Christians will agree on the first four words of the Nicene Creed. It did not occur to me that, whenever I mention a text that is part of the Eucharist, I automatically but unknowingly think of the Latin version. (Yes, pedantic sorts, I know the Nicene Creed was originally in Greek! But I've discovered that, when one is studying ICEL English texts, one must always go back to the Latin 'originals' for the comfort of knowing that these translations are even worse than my Greek...) Another on the forum immediately posted, "I believe in One?". Would you believe it took me a minute to catch on?

I raise a glass to my readers... and to the endless weird Christians who have remembered, through two millennia, that there's more to this season than chocolate, eggs, and rabbits. I'll raise a second glass, after all this Lenten fasting, to those who didn't remember - every family needs its diversity of thought.. :-)