Fungible Convictions

I know, I know. This is a literary website, so what’s with all the church stuff? But anyone who’s Orthodox knows that for Holy Week, your life as you know it stops, and it’s all you can do to keep from making everything about your church community (which is kind of the point for us).

Now that Holy Week is over, I’ll try to get posts back to being about literature and design matters. (For example, don’t forget that the Newburyport Literary Festival is less than a week away! Andre Debus III, Steve Almond, Margaret Love-Denman, Pam Painter, Verilyn Klinkenborg, and many other distinguished guests will be in attendance, and unless you’re an idiot like me and scheduled your vacation at the same time as the festival, you’re constitutionally obligated to go.) Nevertheless, there remain a handful of wonderful Holy Week memories I want to spread around, starting with last night’s services and feast at St. Mary’s.

First, you gotta understand: we Orthodox just spent six weeks fasting (being vegan essentially) and spent the last week in church an average of two hours a night. Last night, the culmination of Holy Week—Pascha, or Easter—we were in services starting at 10pm, on through to about 1:15am. We sing, chant, cross ourselves like it’s going out of style, process out of the church to bang on “princes’ gates” to announce the Resurrection—in other words, we’re physically and mentally exhausted, but also feeling joyous. So what better way to break fast and celebrate than with a feast that goes for a few more hours!

Orthodox feast by drinking, eating, eating, drinking, and being incredibly silly. (We’re batty by the end of Holy Week; last night the choir repeated a particular hymn, and almost no one noticed; Fr. Anthony blew a prayer at one point and got the giggles at the altar.) Best-friend-from-church Bill brought a bottle of fifteen year old Laphroaig. We laughed our butts off at our friend Will, who called it “laff-rogg,” and gave him credit for inventing the name of a new Muppet.

Chris and Abra, who also made a batch of rum-and-whisky tiramisu, brought some Dogfish Head IPA, one of the top brews of the mid-Atlantic states. I should admit at this point that I’m a complete freeloader; I can’t cook, and I had no time to buy anything for the feast. So when I said, “Boy, I’d really love one of Chris’ Dogfishes,” Bill took a long drink of his and said, “Whelp, shoulda brought your own.”

Wine and vodka is in abundance, lots of uzo and arak, and you can usually find one of the deacons asking for people to take shots of his infused vodka with him. Oh, but then there’s the food!

Ham, lamb, meatballs, Chinese food, brie, pate (apparently?), kielbasa, cakes, pastries, cookies, brownies, baklava, and anything else, all homemade, that we can drown in to forget the deprivations of the fast. Oh, but then, off to the side at its own table, is the Eritrean food—if it’s possible to say that the Devil maintained any foothold during a Paschal party, it’s with Eritrean food. On one hand, the smell of the Eritreans’ food is so glorious that to describe it I’d have to use profanity. On the other hand, this is what you say as you eat your first bite: “Mmmmmm, oh man this is good. This is so good! I can’t get over how—hm, getting warm. Oh jeez it’s got a kick, huh? Wow, this is really hot. Very hot. Hot! Hot! Son of a . . . ! Make it stop, IT’S MELTING MY FACE OFF!!!”

Evil, evil I say!

By 3am, the silliness had really taken over. Bill and I were quoting lines from Airplane! (“Cigarette?” “Yes, I know.”)(“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.”) At one point I was laughing with my head on our table. Fr. Anthony made a quick speech to thank a parishioner for her work getting the feast ready, and someone said, “Don’t forget the Eritreans!”

“The Eritreans! Yeah!” Father said, sounding like a frat guy giving a shout-out to an upperclassman. Wooo! Eritrea!

Then a few minutes later, the man who taught my catecumen class silenced half the hall by finishing a story with the yelled line, “And she said, ‘Nuh-uh! You just bitch-slapped her!’”

I love Pascha! Christ is risen! Truly he is risen!
________

More St. Mary’s Holy Week links:

St. Mary Orthodox Church website
Photos from Great and Holy Pascha
Audio from Holy Tuesday’s Bridegroom Matins
Video of Good Friday procession down Massachusetts Ave.
Video of Vesperal Liturgy
My Holy Week photoset on Flickr
Buy a CD by St. Mary’s Boston Byzantine Choir, or listen to a sample.

As promised, here’s video of the most beautiful moment in the most beautiful service of the Orthodox Christian year, the Holy Saturday vesperal liturgy. A parishioner—a talented singer, at that—reads the epistle, followed immediately by Fr. Hughes’ procession around the church. Thoughout the church, Fr. Hughes flings handfuls of the flowers that had been used to cover the funeral bier the night before, on Good Friday.

Many pictures will be posted on St. Mary’s website in the coming days, including some of tonight’s Paschal liturgy.

After coffee hour, I needed to head to the other side of town for a friend’s birthday. I rode the subway with a fellow St. Mary’s member—and one of its many immigrant members. I’ll call him John. John is paradoxically both the most gregarious and solitary man I know at St. Mary’s. He seems to have no family but the Church, yet, probably for that reason, he is so peaceful of demeanor. Such a situation has bestowed upon him the right, in everyone’s mind, to advise without solicitation. This is what John said to me on our train ride after Resurrection Matins, and bear in mind that today is the anniversary of my joining the Orthodox church:

You are so special, you must know. Of all the places in the world, in all of the circumstances—you could be a criminal, you could lonely, you could spend your time gambling, you could be sleeping, you could be traveling to other countries, there are so many things to do this day—and yet you are here, you have chosen to come to church on a Saturday morning, and this church you love. It says so much about the character of your family and of you.

Let me tell you something about your life in the church as it will be. You joined, and you grew to love the church and the building and the people. That’s where you are now. But something will tell you to move to the other side of the room, to the front rows where the choir stands, and you will sing. You will love that too, and later you will ask to join Charlie’s chanting classes. You will learn the tones by listening and then you will chant—and you will be a chanter. Over many years you will want to give more and more, you will be truly a member of St. Mary’s, you and your family.

By the time he finished, we were at Downtown Crossing and had to part ways. Every Easter season has its moment, and this was mine, having a wise man of the church reminding me that a resurrection isn’t merely the overcoming of death—of sin—but of rising ever higher, every day, closer to voice of God and His calling for your life.

It always suprised me that one of the most popular Fungible Convictions posts in the last year was about Orthodox Holy Friday—our Good Friday. While other posts would get a spike in visitors, without fail every day someone found Fungible Convictions by searching for information on Good Friday and the passages used in the evening service.

It’s a year later, and tonight was our Holy Friday “Lamentations” service at my church, St. Mary’s in Cambridge, MA. I figured I’d use tonight as an opportunity for Orthodox P.R., since still not many folks know much about it.

The video above shows, grainily, our funeral procession down Massachusetts Ave. tonight. At the front is a flower-covered bier representing a coffin, and halfway through the video you’ll see that we meet up with our brothers and sisters from Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church, also near Central Square, Cambridge. I tried my best to get a few shots of strangers’ reactions: last year we turned more people on to Orthodox Christianity in fifteen minutes than the church had in fifteen years; this year, we were a more familiar sight, which altogether is a good thing, even though we snarled traffic for half an hour.

My favorite part—I think you can hear it in the audio—is when a homeless man realizes he just hit the jackpot, what with a couple hundred moderately wealthy devoted Christians passing by.

Tomorrow I’ll try to post a video, and some pictures, of the Saturday morning service, widely regarded at the most beautiful service in Orthodoxy, more beautiful than any service I’ve ever seen, and that includes Jesuit Kairos Masses and a couple Moravian Lovefeasts.

But for now, like last year, I’ll leave off with some Holy Friday poetry, used in tonight’s service. . . .

From the first stasis, sung by all during Lamentations:

Who will give me water, for the tears I must weep. So the maiden wed to God cried with loud lament, that for my sweet Jesus I may rightly mourn.

Lo, how fair his beauty! Never man was so fair; but how strangely now has death changed that face we knew, though all nature all her beauty to him owes.

From the second stasis:

That I may renew man’s lost nature now from beauty fallen, gladly in my flesh I take death on me: wherefore, mother, slay me not with bitter tears.

Ah, those eyes so sweet and thy lips, O Word, how shall I close them? How shall I the dues of death to thee pay? So cried Joseph as he shook with holy fear.

You can download the text of the whole service as a Word doc here.