EASTER IN AMERICA, II: Tonight.

darkness: Lost, waiting–it takes so long for my eyes to adapt. I know there’s something there, the pews and statues and pillars that I can almost see and navigate around. I almost know this place. Because we can’t really tell what’s going on in the dark, we have to rely on the people closer to the aisle and the altar to give us our cues: when to stand, when to sit, where to look.

fire: The fire at the back of the church snaps, and glitters in one altar-server’s glasses. It’s constantly in motion. It looks alive, unquiet.

humans: We’re all very awkward. Lots of shuffling, hissing “Is someone sitting here? Oh, I’m sorry,” lots of ushers trying to look efficient as they move through the dark hunting for empty seats. There’s no danger of feeling “ethereal” or pretty-pretty here.

hunger: Hunger draws my focus inward: I’m hungry! I want! But looking inward, what I discover, what is most noticeable, what is most relevant to me and most immediate, is not what I have but what I lack. I seem to have shaped myself around this need, and I am going to go out seeking whatever will fill it. Introspection forces the mind outward, knowing it has a proper object of love, even before it quite knows how to tell meat from poison. Hence, the nuptial meaning of the mind.

prayer: Everyone in this church came to this Church at a different moment, and most people, apparently, are ahead of me. This is my seventh Easter vigil and I still don’t know the responses specific to this day (“Christ our Light”/”Thanks be to God”). I can’t read the program in the dark, so I wait and try to catch what everyone else is saying, and then come in low and hesitant at the tag-end. By the second go-round I’ve got the hang of it and can keep up–though still off-key, of course.

a city church: Headlights sweep across the dark church and sirens howl by outside. We are not home yet.

intercom: The men at the altar are very small and very far away, framed by the big, obvious pillars that are right up close to me. (I came before Mass started, but nonetheless too late to get a close-up seat.) But their voices, as they read the word of God, are close and hang all round me.

bells: The bells aren’t serene. They’re hectic, urgent, like fire alarms: Wake up! wake up! They’re raucous, like that huge relieved laughter you hear when some great danger or embarrassment has passed. Clamor pours down like tickertape on the victory parade.

“except ye become as little children”: Here’s when I get twitchy and fidgety. People are being baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection and I’m woolgathering and drawing elaborate letters with my fingertip on my program. And watching a brother and sister, look to be about ten and seven, go through the exact same “whyyyyy are we waaaaaaaiting” edginess.

humans: Everyone prays in a different posture: back straight, head up, looking bright and clear toward the altar; picking nervously at the fingernails; stifling a yawn and adjusting the glasses, then deep breath and a rush of clarity in the mind (that was me…); bent forward, face in hands; fingers laced or folded hand-over-fist.

Eucharist: Darling (darling, darling), I can’t wait to see you.

Your picture’s not enough–I can’t wait to touch you

In the flesh….

after: There are beggars outside the church, but I didn’t bring any money with me. There are the people who can’t help but sing along with the Hallelujah Chorus as we file out–funny to watch them, preoccupied, trying to find a way through the crowd, and yet still singing, almost muttering in tune to themselves. And there’s the Spanish guy who gossips with his friend about some guy who spent nueve an~os en la carcel, and then bursts out with this shambolic, loud, reeling, drunken-Handel “Hall-le-lu-jah! Hall-le-lu-jah!” until his friend laughs and shuts him up. Children complain and ask what they get for being good for all those hours. Their mother tells them they get Jesus. I grin and head home and wonder what I will make of this five-hundredth second chance I’ve been given.