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I am fascinated by the inappropriate convergence of what is holy with what is common. When the moment is supposed to be reverent, and everyone is poised in dutiful and solemn attention, and then something unmistakably and unavoidably irreverent insists on happening — and the spell is broken, or at least cracked — these moments I find very curious.

Here in Kolkata it is a holy day.  Christians attentive to the church calendar will recognize today as Good Friday.  It is also the Coloring Festival, a Hindi celebration of Spring where colored paint is smeared and squirted on just about anyone passing by.  And, it happens also to be the Muslims’ holy day, Friday, as well as the birthday of their prophet Muhammad, I am told.  So this day in particular is quite a convergence of holidays.  And for Kolkata, which is home to many Muslims, Christians, and Hindis, there is reason to celebrate.

While I type, I am listening to a Muslim speaker, amplified in the streets.  This morning I passed several groups dancing and beating drums as they covered each other in bright greens and pinks, deep reds and dark browns.  As a Christian I attended a Holy Thursday service yesterday with my teammates and today a Good Friday service.  These services were a bit different than I am used to, both longer and more traditional, and yet with some perhaps distinctively Indian characteristics.

The service on Thursday seemed quite solemn and dignified when we arrived.  Many of the Sisters of Charity were in attendance–perhaps it was the same church Mother Teresa attended while living here–and the church was full.  But unlike many Catholic masses I have attended, the music consisted of a choir singing their hearts out to a Karaoke beat.  Even the sung parts of the mass waited for a synthesized beat intro in order to begin.  Since we didn’t have a bulletin, we just listened:

The Priest (sung): ”Let us proclaim the mystery of faaaith…”

Synthesizer: “Pom, chickey, chickey–Pom, chickey, chickey…” [stop]. Restart: “Pom, chickey, chickey…”

Choir sings: “CHRIST HAS DIED, CHRIST IS RISEN…”

I confess some distraction.  But I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of the worshipers, or question the legitimacy of the worship style.  I think trying to decipher the Indian English accent amplified with poor acoustics only made things more difficult to adjust to for our untrained ears.

One thing that did grab my attention during these hours of Indian religious integration was the deft maneuvers of either an unhappy or an adolescent thrill seeking bat that found itself in the well-lit cathedral without a place to land.  What made this most exciting was the presence of a virtual ceiling of whirling electric fans (Kolkata boasts muggy 90 degree temperatures).  So the bat, as long as it was above the fans, had mostly a clear path in cruciform.  But when it decided to swoop or dip at its break-neck speed, it would swerve dangerously close to the whirling blades.  I kept holding my breath for the convergence that would spatter the faithful with bat remains.  The bat would disappear around the corner and I would wait…  There it was!  Swooping and dodging its blind path in tight turns–straight toward a fan… swerve! at the last minute and disappear again around the corner.  I knew the bat was not part of the service, and I knew that I was not supposed to be paying attention to the bat.  It was my duty to join with the congregation in patient attention to the foot washing ceremony we could not see because of the pillars and those seated in front of us.  But this was one of those moments–the convergence of the sacred with the mundane.  I wondered if the priest knew about the bat and whether he was thinking of ways to better ignore its presence while speaking the holy words of ceremony.  Fascinating.

At the Good Friday service earlier today we had no synthesizer.  We were at St. Thomas Catholic church which proved a bit more solemn than St. John’s, and we did without musical accompaniment.  It was nice; I rather liked the blending just of voices together singing the familiar hymns like ”O Sacred Head Now Wounded” and “The Old Rugged Cross.”  But I found that the gospel reading, when sung, is considerably longer than when read — and considerably harder to understand.  I imagine singing holy sections of the mass is intended to tap into the medium of angels to express these important parts rather than simply speaking them.  The down side of this idea is that often the priest is not gifted with an angel’s vocal capabilities  (I wonder if he dreads this obligation more than all the others) and many of the congregation is at best trying to stay focused while one out of four gives in to sleep for the fifteen to twenty minutes of read-singing.  I did think there were better ways to get across this important story, but the solemnity of the many moments was only broken by the fire that lit up in the Sacristy to my right.

Apparently the candle holder in front of the statue of Jesus and Mary had some candles burn down to the stainless steel base, where the melted wax formed one big candle for all the rest of the debris that had collected there.  At first I only noticed the flickering light seemed somehow brighter than before.  When my irreverent eyes turned to investigate, I was alarmed to see a small campfire-sized conflagration was now happily burning in the bottom portion of the candle holder.   Those on my right, nearest the blaze, seemed not to notice.  I was wondering if they were intentionally unconcerned–maybe this happens all the time?–or if they were ignoring the fire’s impertinence for breaking out during the solemnity of the Good Friday service, while the gospel was being sung.

After some time, a man with a rolled up bulletin (probably a deacon) began to confront the fire with his weapon, which not surprisingly turned itself into a torch as it sucked up the hot wax and lit in the flames that had been going for about ten minutes.  He tried to blow it out, but it only raged with the breath.  He was beginning to draw attention as he stamped out his bulletin and pondered his next move.  He and another man decided to drain the wax, so they put out all the other candles and tipped the fire on its side, where hot wax drizzled and pooled onto the stone floor.  Then they scraped the flaming debris into a more concentrated pile on the candle holder using the ever-effective rolled bulletin.  Several more flaming-bulletin-putting-outs ensued.  By this time back-up had arrived with a water bottle and they began dousing the fire, which now had also begun on the floor as well.  It made an inconvenient loud hissing and sputtering sound, as the water came in contact with hot steel and hot wax at the same time.  Several more heads turned as the Sacristy swirled lightly with steam and smoke.  Another woman came rushing with her water bottle and finished off the fire once and for all.  Satisfied, they resumed their seats as the service, that hadn’t skipped a beat, continued.

As I said earlier, I find these moments of combined holiness and ordinariness very interesting.  It is an exercise in holy problem solving — figuring out how to acknowledge that which is not supposed to be happening with poise and ease, and maintain a proper level of reverence throughout.  I tell these stories with a degree of amusement, because I think it’s appropriate to find humor in our human attempts to control a not-so-sacred happening in the midst of what is supposed to be a sacred atmosphere.  But these convergences are not always harmless or amusing.

I have heard stories of indignant righteous church-goers who have embarrassed new-comers by asking them not to wear such a “disrespectful” T-shirt in the house of God.  Maybe the person didn’t even realize what was written on her shirt, but was already self-conscious enough about being in church.  As the child of missionary parents in French-speaking Africa, I remember Mom and Dad laughing about an usher who was happily unaware that his T-shirt read: “Where the Hell is Frasier?” as he passed the offering bag.  But I know that some people have been chased away from God’s house in confusion because someone thought they were insulting God.  When this ”ordinary” meets that kind of “holy”–one without good will, compassion, or humility–it is not a laughing matter.

The story of the Christ at Easter is full of the mixing of holy with mundane, the sacred with the earthly.  It begins at Christmas where we celebrate Almighty God as Immanuel, a human child.  On Good Friday, we contemplate the mystery of God’s holiness dying a sinful death.  The scriptures say that Jesus, being in very nature immortal God, emptied himself and became a human–a slave who died a miserable death on a cross.  It’s this mixing of holiness and humanness Christians remember especially on Good Friday.  Ironically, it’s also the mixing of holiness and humanness that the religious leaders cited when they sentenced Jesus to die: “…It is not for any of these crimes that we sentence you, but because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

The pretense of holiness can be a powerful and dangerous thing.  Although it can be uncomfortable, I like it when reverent situations are infused with a dose of reality.  I am reminded that we are not the ones in control and that God delights in the ordinary things–the things we consider insignificant or foolish.  As Christians we seek holiness, yes, but we cannot create it through our actions or by manipulating the environment.  We must accept it as grace while we pursue it with discipline, always acting in love.

The mysterious paradox of life…

May your celebrations and reflections during this Easter season find the right mix of reverence and reality, one that would lead to a humble and grateful smile.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 11:03 am and is filed under Drew's Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.