|
Column On Sunday, Im there to be a part of whatever
happens
By JEANNETTE BATZ
Our alarm clock wakes us with church
bells, but the sound effect doesnt make the Sunday morning decision any
easier. Every week, I feel like a trivialized parody of Christ in the desert,
tempted by demons that direct me to silence the alarm, stretch luxuriously,
punch the pillow into a fluffier configuration, cuddle into the curve of my
husbands broad back and fall blissfully back to sleep.
I conjure the entire fantasy in a matter of seconds: We would wake
when we had truly rested, and not when some cute trinket of a machine told us
it was time; we would put on shorts washed soft, T-shirts older than our
friends children. Padding barefoot to the sidewalk, wed retrieve
the fat blue-plastic Tootsie Roll of the Sunday New York Times, then
leisurely grind and brew coffee, make omelets, end with a second cup of coffee
and a plate of pastry, reading our favorite sections of the paper in rockers on
the sun porch, a soft breeze blowing through the screened windows, birdsong
filling the yard.
The alternative, of course, is to slap the snooze button and spend
the next five minutes irritably waiting for the second alarm. Boil water for
powdered chemical coffee, snarf down a doughnut, run the dog around the block,
sponge off, throw on stiff, hot dress-up clothes, slink in late, sit down in a
hard wooden pew and be preached at. Then come home cranky to start what feels
like the real day, half over.
In high school, I never went through a period of wanting to skip
church. Im beginning to think I should have. Maybe if Id gotten it
out of my system then, I wouldnt be plagued with adolescent twinges so
unsuitable to someone in her late 30s. Because I really do want to go to
church, and am always glad once I have done so.
On regular Sundays -- Sundays of Ordinary Time, as the church so
accurately calls them -- we are still celebrating something momentous and
unrepeatably special, but in a matter-of-fact way that blends right into our
own mundane routines. We slide into our usual parking spots, head for our usual
pews, flip thin pages until we locate the proper hymn. Like lovemaking in a
long marriage, the challenge on these Sundays is to avoid being perfunctory
about actions as familiar as our own skin.
More public and showy than matins or vespers, less reverent than
quiet contemplation, the weekly liturgy is bookended by coffee, casual chitchat
and practical committee meetings. People are there because they want to be, but
also because they feel they ought to be. Were all acquainted and care
about each other, but often not with great intimacy, passion or even specific
knowledge.
The variations in music, readings and sermon prove mildly
interesting, but any change is usually guaranteed to be inoffensive.
We do not come to the Sunday liturgy like desert travelers to an
oasis fresh running water. We come like calm, well-organized Christians
to their weekly obligation. Seldom are we surprised. And thus it often takes a
conscious gathering-in, an exertion of will, before I can feel the sacred,
timeless presence abiding through it all.
The admission shames me. I sound like one of those people who can
never enjoy the calm of everyday domestic bliss, but yearns for the temporary
excitements, the peaks and valleys of romantic infatuation. Confined inside the
four walls of a traditional church, I offer hot, poetic defense of a God found
wild in nature, or soft in a marriage bed, or easy on the porch -- as though
those experiences and church were mutually exclusive.
Trapped in romanticism, I rant -- until a friend wordlessly hands
me Wallace Stevens famous poem Sunday Morning. It opens with
an image guaranteed to seize me: Complacencies of the peignoir, and
late/Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,/And the green freedom of a
cockatoo/Upon a rug mingle to dissipate/the holy hush of ancient
sacrifice.
The woman in Stevens poem finds God in the comforts of
sun instead of the death symbols of blood and sepulcher. The problem is
that the sun and the other glories of nature, if bricked off from the altar,
are just as insufficient as what she calls death symbols. In
contentment, she admits, I still feel the need of some imperishable
bliss.
The only way to reach such bliss is through reenacting, week after
week, the kind of death that gives life.
And so, even in the middle of sleepy Ordinary Time, there are days
when a chance word in a prayer or hymn is enough to transfigure the entire
Eucharist, lift it until its shot through with light.
And there are days when I look around at pews full of toddlers,
octogenarians, wide-open singles and old-shoe married couples and I can feel
the unity, lines of connection as taut as a cats cradle strung round my
fingers.
And finally I remember: I am not here to be amused, but simply to
be a part of whatever happens. However ordinary, or extraordinary, it may prove
to be.
Jeannette Batz is a staff writer at The Riverfront
Times, an alternative newspaper in St. Louis.
National Catholic Reporter, September 3,
1999
|
|