Hippity hoppity, it's Easter. For those of you who have been following, this would have been the 45th and last day of silence. But alas, the silence was ill-fated, and I fell about 22 days short of my goal. There's always next year I guess. But of course, by then I'll probably be on to something more ambitious. "The Blind and Legless 45" perhaps?
or no.
So this morning I went to a great Easter mass. At St. Bede's of Lathrup Village, anything can happen. That church is one of the few threads that keep me tied to Catholicism. This morning, we started with a hymn led by a motley crew that included Gov. Granholm's mother-in-law. Standing at a little over 4 feet, the grey-haired matron's face was hidden from view by her neighbor's hymnals.
There was Michael, the music director, who announced the hymn pages with a pronounced lisp and a twirl of his wrist through the air. Not really shocking, but colorful in a "stop-the-Pope-dead-in-his-tracks" sort of way. And the altar boy, bless his soul, who was charged with the trying task of toting the incence in a large, open copper basin, the pungent smoke pluming around his face.
Father Larry, our priest, is a fabulous public speaker. He played to the crowd with his water blessing, prefacing the event with a brief speech: "As many of my parishoners know, sprinkling holy water is one of my favorite duties. Prepare yourselves." The churchgoers had only a moment to brace themselves before Fr. Larry proceeded to march down the aisles with a ewe bough and a bowl of holy water, literally dowsing his parishoners in his ice-cold broth of God. One little boy threw on his coat and raised his hood mere seconds before Father drenched him. An older woman stood shaking and drying her glasses on her Easter blouse after he had passed.
In the end, though, Father Larry met a just end: Music Director Michael was invited to the alter to bless Father; after dunking the ewe leaves thoroughly, Michael managed to soak Larry to the bone.
The sermon was lovely, the sacrament was doled out in due formality. Under the leadership of the lector, we prayed for the military evacuation of Iraq, an end to sexual discrimination. Not, I'm sure, Papal mandated prayers, but God shone down on them nonetheless.
Then, just as the clock was winding toward the close of the hour, Father Larry began his annual holiday end-of-mass game: "Out of city, out of state or out of your mind". The game is simple: Churchgoers shout out if they are visiting from out of the area and Father Larry presents colorful replies, mostly involving those cities' hockey teams, and whether the Detroit Red Wings have played them recently.
"Montreal, Father!" one man shouted.
"I prayed for you!" Father Larry said. "But you lost, 3-0."
For us locals, it's pure hilarity. But for the woman from Austin in the last pew, I had a sense it was confusing. That is, until Father Larry called on her.
"Where are you from?"
"Austin, Texas!"
"But you don't have a hockey team!" said Father, at loss for a witty reply.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"That's okay," he said, "It's just that that's what I do."
The mass closed on the church singing Happy Birthday to Music Director Michael, and Father Larry telling us his age in the form of a subtraction problem using the jersey numbers of two Detroit Red Wings.
The music played us out. We left happy, as if the weight of the world, a large stone, had been lifted. We crawled from the cavern of the church out into daylight.
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