PALMS & PRETENSE    

[The Procession]   

Sunshine streaking through stain-glassed windows, rainbow swirls dancing on ancient tile, I craned my neck from the back pew to hear Good News this bright Palm Sunday morning.    Anything that would catch my throat and force me to spit up all of this old stuff I have been hanging onto for dear life.

Driving in, I could barely contain the emotion rising up in my soul - so long have I carried it in heart without release, I was eager to get there.   Find my seat and my place in a comfortable house again.   Where I am welcomed, embraced, invited to participate without having to explain how I got there.   Or why.   Or what I’ve been doing with my life all of these lost years.  

Others see it this way, I know.   That I have been ‘lost’ without direction in a wilderness storm since the day I chucked my career and gave it all up for God.  Surrendered my soul and everything I could muster to a ‘dream’,  just like in the old days, when believing in the Just cause of Faith was a radical thing, not so lackluster a leaning as it is today, I realize,  wondering why Faith "looks" so different.       

Everything seems out of place to me, and nothing fits.   From the first moment outside the church, when we are straining to hear the priest's instructions, we stand in silence with palm fronds in hand and palm crosses on lapels, to symbolize the long procession into Jerusalem, before Jesus was turned over to the 'crowd' and condemned by 'popular vote' to be crucified.   All through the service the 'celebrant's' presence is missing, offering only a glimpse of understanding at the end of the service, when the presiding priest shoulders a wooden cross and stumbles down the aisle, signifying Christ’s persecution.    Perhaps it is by design, I think, a 'passion play' in progressive free-form liturgy.  If so, it's brilliant, because I am totally caught off guard by the disorder and want to know who the players are, so I can be included.  I am keenly aware of not 'feeling' this congregation, and do not want to be disenfranchised from the soul of Faith on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy week.

The service remains disjointed and hangs without heart upon a draped and somber crucifix center aisle,  where the altar used to be.   I want to cry and pray here, bow my head and be resurrected from grief here, save my soul and spirit here, by the presence and all-redeeming power of Jesus Christ, to whom I  have given and owe everything.   But there is nothing but chaos dwelling in this House, and I am stymied, incapable of reaching the release I crave in sacred space.  

Maybe it’s me, then, I think, looking around to see if anyone else is bothered, seems out of place, shuffling through prayer books, hymnals and loose-leaf  Sunday bulletins, looking for clues. Oddly, not a soul other than me appears to notice at all that we do not know what we are doing, or in which direction we are being lead this morning, as we wave our palms in pretense and sing a hymn familiar only to the choir.  Am I the only one who is bothered?    Or misses structured rites for meaning?     

Puzzled, I have to hurry through my post-communion prayer because congregants are already leaving, before the service is officially over.   Children scramble to get past me on this back pew, so there is no time left to linger here, dwell in the house of the Lord, for comfort, understanding, answers. I am not sure what I was searching for this morning, but I know I wanted it to look like God was in the House.  Somewhere.   Anywhere.  

I stay and wait for Him in the benediction – the closing blessing and post hymn, but it never comes.   The only glimpse of Christ I get is the lonely priest shouldering a six foot wooden cross, proceeding down the altar aisle …

Bearing & Being [The Breaking] 2007

Money & Masters [The Manna] 2006 

© 2008 Phyllis A Travis