Palm Sunday and Bagpipes

We gathered in the school gym across from the Cathedral as we do every year on this day.  The children are giddy as we pick out our palm fronds to wave.  Parishioners aren’t obstructed by pews, excited to see friends and family.  The gym is full of electricity as we look forward to join the processional across the street and into the church.  The Archbishop has come for this special occasion and blesses our palms.  We follow the cross, the Archbishop and our Priest out of the gym into the sunshine to proceed to the church, trumpets blasting on all sides of us. The children are in pure delight, waving the fronds as we sing joyfully “Hosanna!  Hosanna!  Hosanna in excelsis!”

As we approach the Cathedral, we stall as the pathway becomes narrow, there is a corridor ahead lined with the choir to join our singing.  The mood begins to shift as our gait slows, those nervous of crowds, tense as we are packed tighter to walk through the corridor ahead.  Then I hear it. On the other side of the Cathedral.  Bagpipes. I had forgotten.  Each year on Palm Sunday, a bagpiper in full regalia plays during this procession.  I don’t know if it is because I am part Scottish, as the sound of bagpipes stirs in me a sense of longing for a connection to a country and a family I never knew or if it is my association of bagpipes with funerals, but my heart drops.  I am reminded that at the end of this Holy Week, Christ will be on the cross. 

I look at the joyous faces of the choir, eager to join the celebration, now appear jeering as I am reminded that this same jubilant crowd who welcomed Him into Jerusalem would be shouting “Crucify Him!” later in the week.  I begin to cry.  As if we are thinking the same thing, my 6-year-old looks up at me and asks “Mommy, did Jesus know He was going to die?” I answer, “Yes, son, He did.” I imagine myself as Christ on that donkey looking out on these faces with more compassion than I can muster.

I am reminded of my own faith, so enthusiastic and then waning. Even at the beginning of this Lenten season, I was so eager to give, to return to basics, to listen.  But…my excitement dwindled.  I know come Friday I would have been standing with the crowd calling for His death, even after celebrating His glory just days before.  

We enter into the Cathedral to begin Mass.  In years past I have dreaded standing during the entire Luke reading accounting the entire Passion: Today it is the very least I can do to honor Him.  I enter Holy Week with a heavy heart but looking forward to saying "Alleluia" next Sunday for the 1st time in 40 days and truly meaning it.

Present Presence

My 5- and 6-year-old sons were in a week-long day camp during a break from school. The camp focused on “music and movement,” which is another way of saying it was a theater camp.  Each week had a theme. The week my boys attended was Elvis week. They learned how to pretend to play the guitar and shake their hips. They had a blast.

The camp concluded with a performance on Friday. I arrived early and got a seat on aisle so I’d be sure to see both children wherever they happened to be on the stage. When performance time came I was taken aback when every single adult in the audience stood up, took out their phones and began filming the performance. There was no way I could see through the barrage of phones and iPads. I found it strange that I was the only person who was actually watching the performance, not the screen, but couldn’t see it.

The poet Wendell Berry speaks to this in his poem “The Vacation,” in which a man spends his vacation filming it, “preserving” it.

It would be there. With a flick

of a switch, there it would be. But he

would not be in it. He would never be in it.

I completely understand this phenomenon of being there but not being present. I absolutely suffer from it too. My mind is always running through a list of the next three things to do. I am always trying to see if the other person I needed to talk to about x is here in the room. Even when I look into the eyes of my little boys, telling me a sweet story they made up about their Lego creation, I am thinking about what I need to do next.

It is hard for me to connect with people in my life. I’m not sure if this is because of my chaotic childhood, my inability to trust people, my own anxiety, or all of the above. I am gregarious, fairly likable, open, but I never seem to actually get close to others. I think to myself, “I should take medication. Maybe this would help me to connect with others …” Or is this disconnection, this loneliness, what connects me to Christ and His sufferings?

When we are at last united with Christ, what will that feel like? Will He have time for me? Or will He look over my head for the next person in the room? I give Christ my symptoms of anxiety.

I honestly do not know what it is like to look into someone’s eyes and have them be completely present for me for more than a minute. The artist Marina Abramovic exhibited a performance art piece called “The Artist is Present” at MOMA a few years ago. In the piece, she offered herself to a “sitter,” a museum patron simply sitting across from her for a few minutes, as completely present, silent but meeting their gaze, never breaking it. The sitters’ responses ranged from nervous giggles, to iced stoicism, to tears.

The response to Abramovic was so powerful, it makes me wonder what it will be like to sit across from Christ. Will I giggle? Will I crumble? Will I meet His gaze? St Paul says that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I will be fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I feel that this is a promise, that I will be a new creation, that I will not reach for my phone to record my meeting, that I will not be thinking about how I can tell others later. I will allow myself to be loved.

Ash Wednesday: A Holy Day, I Yearn For.

My husband and I received our ashes from Cardinal Mahoney, my first year as a Catholic. I sat down in the pew, I could hear the Cardinal repeating the words,

Turn away from sin, be true to the Gospel

I love the repetition of words. Protestants don't tend to favor that type of prayer, worship but I do. I remember times of feeling far from God, frightened. All I had to cling on to were a few words from a song I might have learned in Sunday School or VBS as a child. I would just repeat them in prayer over and over until they sunk in.

Turn away from sin, be true to the Gospel

My mentor in seminary, would always say, if we really believed what we said we believed, our lives would be proof of that. Isn't that what being true to the Gospel means. Now that you have repented and believed, live like you mean it.

On the bus ride home, one of the ladies who was in Mass with us had her hair arranged just so, so that her cross of ashes was not visible to others. I thought, what a shame. I understand that it is awkward, you get a lot of stares, but I love receiving my cross. It is the one day of the year that I walk down the street, people look at me and know that I belong to Christ. I am proud of that.

Sure, you get a lot of people who don't know what it means. You also get a lot of people who look and are reminded, "Yes, today is a day of holy obligation. I should go to church today".

When I came back to faith several years ago, I started romanticizing the communion of saints. I believe there is something mystical that happens, when we are transformed by God's grace. We are connected to one another in a mystical way.

I remember daydreaming how marvelous it would be, if you knew that someone was a Christian and they would have to love you, take you in, encourage you and vice versa. Once at a Starbucks the barista said "Here you go, Sister" as he passed me my drink. I thought "Is he a Christian? How did he know? " I said outside contemplating this when he came out to empty the trash, a guy held open the door for him. "Thank you Brother" he said. My daydream was crumbling. He returned and asked one of the patrons outside with me "How is your latte, Brother?" I began to suspect that he just called everyone Brother and Sister, like an old hippie. Ash Wednesday is one of those days that we know that we are connected when we see that cross of ashes on our forehead.

I walked back into my building and was greeted by one of the maintenance men. He lit up when he saw me walk in. With very limited and broken English, he pointed to my cross with love and reverence..."That is good!" he said to me. Yes, we are mystically connected to one another.

Peace be with you.