Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison
Today was Maundy Thursday, the first day of the Triduum in Holy Week. It's the feast day that celebrates the Last Supper, and out of all the services in the liturgical year, the Maundy Thursday service is always the one that's the most emotional for me.
I went to church tonight with noeon. (It's odd to realise that I've only been confirmed in the Episcopal Church for about a year and a half now. It feels like I've been Anglican all my life. Maybe in a way I have…I knew I'd come home the first time I opened my Book of Common Prayer.)
This has been a difficult Lent in a lot of ways for me for a number of reasons, and coming to the close of it has left me tired and drained. I knew the Maundy Thursday service would be a wave of emotion--there's so much about it that is significant and symbolic to me and by the end of it my eyes are definitely not dry. This year, however, I started welling up during the Collect of the Day and barely made it through having my feet washed, much less the remainder of the service.
For me the most gut-wrenching part of Maundy Thursday comes at the end, after the last Eucharist before Easter has been given, after the blessing has been said. The priests come to the altar and they strip it down, taking away the liturgical elements, folding and removing the altar cloth, baring the wood table beneath as a youth choir chants Tantum Ergo Sacramentum in the most beautiful voices you'll hear. The altar's washed down. Silence falls, the candles are extinguished, and the lights are slowly dimmed until only one faint light over the altar remains, and then suddenly it's turned off, leaving the altar dark and empty.
It takes my breath away every time I see it, and just puts into perspective what exactly the next three days mean.
By that point tonight I had tears dripping down my face and onto my shirt, faster than I could wipe them away. It just hit me so hard this year. There's so much grief in the Maundy Thursday service as it is, or at least there is for me. And in recent days I've been dealing with an upsurge of grief about my dad.
It's been almost six years since he died, and I'd thought I'd grieved, but I've been learning that perhaps some of that grief got walled off inside and I'm having to come to terms with it again. It got touched upon during last Saturday's Rhett Miller concert--one of the songs he played was Holy Cross, which was a song I played over and over and over again after my father died. It's about a man who dies in a car wreck, and my father had a heart attack in his car while he was driving. So that cracked open a well of grief I didn't realize was there. Tonight the crack exploded.
As people drifted out of the church, I just knelt on the pew kneeler and cried--for Daddy, for myself, for my faith, for the symbolism of the ritual around me. I wasn't alone in that, though...in front of us was a lovely lesbian couple who are some of the kindest people you'd meet. One of them came remarkably close to dying a few weeks back. Tears were streaming down their faces too, and that helped me feel less self-conscious. I really hate crying in public.
I think perhaps there's something about touching death, and knowing what it can take from you while you're sitting there in a dark church with that stark, bare altar sitting in front of you. It just kicked me in the gut, the realization of What All This Means To Me. Tonight was one of the most intense moments of my faith I've ever experienced, and I don't even have adequate words for it. I won't ever forget it though.
Looking at that empty altar, dark and alone, I'm always reminded of the Garden of Gethsemane, which is the part of the Easter story that breaks me the most. The agony and anguish of those moments make me ache. What would it be like to know you were going to die, and to not want to so desperately that you sweat drops of blood, begging not to have to go through with it?
There's nothing as triumphant as Easter morning--it's the most joyous celebration of the year, the highest feast day, the most important element of the Christian faith. And I'm looking forward to it--Noe and I have plans to attend Easter Vigil at 4:30 Sunday morning and then Eucharist five hours later. It's going to be amazing. And exhausting. But mostly amazing. :)
But tonight I had to remember that you can't have joy without sorrow. You have to go through the darkness; you have to feel the overwhelming grief. And I think that's something I need to carry with me this Easter and beyond.
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This entry was originally posted at http://femmequixotic.dreamwidth.org/451433.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID.
I went to church tonight with noeon. (It's odd to realise that I've only been confirmed in the Episcopal Church for about a year and a half now. It feels like I've been Anglican all my life. Maybe in a way I have…I knew I'd come home the first time I opened my Book of Common Prayer.)
This has been a difficult Lent in a lot of ways for me for a number of reasons, and coming to the close of it has left me tired and drained. I knew the Maundy Thursday service would be a wave of emotion--there's so much about it that is significant and symbolic to me and by the end of it my eyes are definitely not dry. This year, however, I started welling up during the Collect of the Day and barely made it through having my feet washed, much less the remainder of the service.
For me the most gut-wrenching part of Maundy Thursday comes at the end, after the last Eucharist before Easter has been given, after the blessing has been said. The priests come to the altar and they strip it down, taking away the liturgical elements, folding and removing the altar cloth, baring the wood table beneath as a youth choir chants Tantum Ergo Sacramentum in the most beautiful voices you'll hear. The altar's washed down. Silence falls, the candles are extinguished, and the lights are slowly dimmed until only one faint light over the altar remains, and then suddenly it's turned off, leaving the altar dark and empty.
It takes my breath away every time I see it, and just puts into perspective what exactly the next three days mean.
By that point tonight I had tears dripping down my face and onto my shirt, faster than I could wipe them away. It just hit me so hard this year. There's so much grief in the Maundy Thursday service as it is, or at least there is for me. And in recent days I've been dealing with an upsurge of grief about my dad.
It's been almost six years since he died, and I'd thought I'd grieved, but I've been learning that perhaps some of that grief got walled off inside and I'm having to come to terms with it again. It got touched upon during last Saturday's Rhett Miller concert--one of the songs he played was Holy Cross, which was a song I played over and over and over again after my father died. It's about a man who dies in a car wreck, and my father had a heart attack in his car while he was driving. So that cracked open a well of grief I didn't realize was there. Tonight the crack exploded.
As people drifted out of the church, I just knelt on the pew kneeler and cried--for Daddy, for myself, for my faith, for the symbolism of the ritual around me. I wasn't alone in that, though...in front of us was a lovely lesbian couple who are some of the kindest people you'd meet. One of them came remarkably close to dying a few weeks back. Tears were streaming down their faces too, and that helped me feel less self-conscious. I really hate crying in public.
I think perhaps there's something about touching death, and knowing what it can take from you while you're sitting there in a dark church with that stark, bare altar sitting in front of you. It just kicked me in the gut, the realization of What All This Means To Me. Tonight was one of the most intense moments of my faith I've ever experienced, and I don't even have adequate words for it. I won't ever forget it though.
Looking at that empty altar, dark and alone, I'm always reminded of the Garden of Gethsemane, which is the part of the Easter story that breaks me the most. The agony and anguish of those moments make me ache. What would it be like to know you were going to die, and to not want to so desperately that you sweat drops of blood, begging not to have to go through with it?
There's nothing as triumphant as Easter morning--it's the most joyous celebration of the year, the highest feast day, the most important element of the Christian faith. And I'm looking forward to it--Noe and I have plans to attend Easter Vigil at 4:30 Sunday morning and then Eucharist five hours later. It's going to be amazing. And exhausting. But mostly amazing. :)
But tonight I had to remember that you can't have joy without sorrow. You have to go through the darkness; you have to feel the overwhelming grief. And I think that's something I need to carry with me this Easter and beyond.
------------------
This entry was originally posted at http://femmequixotic.dreamwidth.org/451433.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID.