Finding our Middle – 40 Days with Anna

Day 40 – Holy Saturday 

To Read:

I wanted to say more, a whole lot more, but she wasn’t listening any more, just smiling.  The days burnt up like giant candles, and time melted, ran, and congealed into useless and hideous lumps.

Two days after the funeral I found Anna’s seed pouch. It gave me something to do. I went to the cemetery and stayed for a little while.  It just made things worse, that much more empty.  If only I had been nearer at the time – If only I had known what she was doing, if only – if only – I tipped the seeds on the fresh-turned earth and hurled the pouch from me in misery.

I wanted to hate God, wanted him out of my system, but he wouldn’t go.  I found God more real, more strangely real than ever before.  Hate wouldn’t come, but I despised him.  God was an idiot, a cretin, a moron.  He could have saved Anna, but he didn’t;  he just let this most stupid of all things happen.  This child, this beautiful child, had been cut off – cut off and not yet eight.  Just when she was – Hell!

The War years took me out of the East End.  The War dragged its bloody boots over the face of the world until the madness was over.  Thousands of other children had died, thousands more were maimed and homeless.  The madness of war became the madness of victory.  

To Reflect:

What do we do with this day in-between?  The day when the shadow of death weighs heavy and, even though we know the dawn will come and ‘Alleluias’ will be sung again, things don’t quite fit.

If we have a deep personal grief, and with the recent pandemic and the constant wars and rumours of war around us we do not have to go far to find grief, this liminal time can open old wounds that have not yet become scars.  We cannot yet show our hands to others as proof of our personal resurrections.  It still hurts too much.

Even when the celebrations come, we can be tempted to get lost in them and, as did Fynn, literally drown our sorrows.  What do we do when we look at a world that still seems as ‘muddled’ as it was before Mister God came into our lives?

The Psalmist reminds us again and again that its ok to ‘have a go at God.’ When the questions are too big to carry and the pain too deep to allow normal life the nail-scarred hands of the One Who Loves us Best are opened wide in front of us and God says, ‘let me carry your pain’ (Isaiah 53).

When things become unbearable for me.  When I want to scream and shout at God.  When I protest that, having done all I was asked to do, why do I still end up being hurt.  When every road feels like the one to Calvary and every valley is shadowed by death I turn to a piece of music my music teacher at the Royal Hospital School introduced me to.

Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein wrote a theatre piece called ‘Mass’ for the opening of the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts.  The Kennedy family are Roman Catholic and the libretto is mostly taken from the Tridentine Mass in Latin.  During it a solid dogmatic robed formal choir sings parts of the mass in Latin while a relaxed ‘street choir’ in workaday clothes questions the words of faith.  In the middle the Celebrant tries to hold them altogether until, exhausted by there being too many competing voices, throws the monstrance holding the sacred host to the ground where it shatters, and he dissolves in tears.  The whole piece is worth watching (see footnote^[1]) especially if you can find a copy of the libretto to go with it, but the ending, where all is healed by a chorister reminding the celebrant of the call to praise God and the whole company breathes out the words ‘pax tecum^[2]’  grabs my heart and reminds me again and again that God is in the middle of the muddle of life

This is where I go to hide and find healing when the weight of the world, the church and my sins becomes too heavy.  If you don’t watch the whole piece please watch the ending from about 20 minutes.

Pax Tecum

Please Note:  These reflections are also published on my blog: suffolkvicarhomes.com on Bluesky as @suffolkvicar.bsky.social, and on my public Facebook page  Suffolk Vicar – Rev Andrew Dotchin.  If you would like them as a daily email please send a request to revdotchin@gmail.com

If you have enjoyed reading them please make a donation to The Clergy Support Trust who provided a  generous grant to help me find the space to compose them.

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^[1] To view a full performic of Mass follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RL96d80DJRI

^[2] Pax tecum – Peace be with you.