Monday, April 18, 2011

Sunday sightings # 2

I found myself overcome several times yesterday during our Palm Sunday service.  One of the really wonderful things we do on that day is we invite liturgical dancers to be part of the opening procession.  These dancers, beautiful young women, are under the direction of one of our parishioners, who is a professional dancer and instructor of dancers.  Their choreography, which tells the story of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, ends with three of these young women, lifting up the fourth – their whole bodies becoming the cross – it literally takes your breath away, coming as it does, without a warning, at the end of a long, beautiful, joyful, and pleasant dance of adoring fans.  The economy, simplicity and yet, profound message of this part of the dance solidifies the contrasts, the tensions always present in the story of Jesus’ last days.  What a gift.

I also found myself remembering the many years and countless times I have come to church and heard the Passion narrative – most certainly now, nearly 50 years without interruption …and yet, the story never fails to touch me, to move me or to surprise me in some way.  I had the same reaction yesterday as I had when visiting the Book of Kells in Ireland last fall – and in a quiet moment alone in the chapel space at the Massive Cathedral/Castle at the Rock of Cashel…home to more than that famous bleu cheese.

As I gazed at those ancient manuscripts, I was overcome with an awareness of the deep love of God and God’s Word that prompted those monks to begin their illumination project – that same love, that sustained them and kept them diligent, in the making of the paper, the ink, and in the painstaking task of copying, editing and finishing those pages …the work of their whole lives…

Likewise, as I stood alone in the chapel of that ancient fortress, given to the church by a grateful, newly converted pagan chieftain …I experienced what felt like a visitation… a sense of being with countless others who had come to this place to find something holy, something beyond this world, to sustain them.  I felt such a solidarity with all the faithful who had left their milking, plowing, washing, and, probably, warring, to climb the hill, hear the words of Holy Scripture – the same words I’ve been raised on – and to receive the sacrament.  In good times and in bad, the faithful have come to these sacred places and liminal spaces – to listen again to the ancient story, to ponder the meaning of all that is so much beyond us, yet so meaningful present to us ….to feel the mystery and love of God rendered, albeit imperfectly, through the symbols of bread, wine and story. 

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