I had a minimalist
Easter. To an enthusiastic Christian
that is possibly an oxymoron. It pleased
me well enough. My Benedictine liturgies
and offices remained shut. I listened to
none of the great music. I would have
been glad to read what Rowan Williams preached on Easter morning, but he is no
longer at Canterbury and on the web.
On Sunday morning,
early, on the Concert Programme, there was a sublime Bach cantata – but it had
to yield to what my family expected to hear, the Sunday Easter hymns on the
National Programme, sung by great choirs.
Switching over to that however, we found instead a sad relay from the
Anglican cathedral at Waiapu, too embarrassing for words, totally
disappointing. So we switched it
off.
At 8 am I was at the
Anglican church in Warkworth. Oh dear… I
had to rely on the fact that I was at the Eucharist, and that however mangled,
all I sought was there, somewhere, in the ruins. The elderly priest hashed his way through a
perfectly simple liturgy. The vicar
preached about losing her keys and going from despair to joy when she found
them.
The woman who read the
gospel lesson apparently believes she has a mission to show us all how it
should be done. She elocutes. It is best described as former-times BBC
English resuscitated and caricatured.
And she seemed to have arranged with the organist to bracket her reading
with a screeching, painfully reverberating and totally inappropriate fanfare on
the digital organ’s trumpets and cornopeans, before and after she performed the
lesson.
Chocolate easter
bunnies were handed out at the door.
Why is it that when I
go to church I am obliged to sit there battling with myself? For some reason, hanging on the altar rail on
a long cord is a referee’s whistle. I am
not making this up. Perhaps I should
surreptitiously photograph it. I am informed that it is a fire precaution
requirement. On the altar rail…? Is someone likely to be smoking there? They do light candles, I guess. Should
I perhaps blow the whistle when I go up for communion? Maybe everyone then would, by reflex, leave
the building and gather at a designated point outside. I might just resort to that next time I hear
the liturgy read as though it is the report of a bad day at the Pukekohe stock
sales.
So Easter came and
went, despite the church. For me it was
a time of peace and truth. It is no
longer a question of creeds and drama.
It is a presence, a matter of where you are living, in Easter or out of
it. For some reason I don’t understand,
while others need to remember it and celebrate it and enact it, I don’t.
