Palm Sunday, II
After the first reading from the Hebrew Bible, the congregation at my church always listens and responds to a Psalm. On Palm Sunday, it is always Psalm 22, all about how badly other people are treating Jesus. It’s a powerful account that always moves me because we have a special male cantor who really helps us feel Jesus’ pain. That person has always been white, but this Sunday, the young black man in our choir (who is also in training to be a choir director and has a beautiful voice) stepped up into the pulpit to be the cantor.
Here’s some of what he sang in a heavily minor key: “All who see me deride me, they curl their lips, they toss their heads… Many dogs have surrounded me, a wicked band besets me. They tear holes in my hands and feet and lay me in the dust of death. I can count all my bones…. They divide my clothes among them. They cast lots for my robe.” The refrain which we all sing at the end of each of the canted verses is “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.”
As the black man with the powerful and poignant voice delivered this psalm, I thought I might not be able to stay in my pew because the words from so very long ago suddenly felt like what current black men, often innocent themselves just as Jesus is, might say before they are scorned, assaulted, and quite possibly even killed. I flashed to Ta Nahisi Coates’ memoir for his and his wife’s son, Between the World and Me, in which he keeps emphasizing the centrality of the human body for black people who realize they may lose theirs before the end of any day or week. Suddenly time and place fell away and I understood more acutely than at any point in my long life just how frightened and sad and betrayed Jesus must have felt at this moment in his journey.
Who knows what prompted our marvelous choir director to tap the black man to give us this painful picture, but what her doing so has reinforced for me is this: It is not just WHAT is being said/sung/acted/drawn/danced/proclaimed/advertised/argued in court or legislative halls. WHO performs art or politics or justice or anything else in any culture at any moment clearly matters in major ways.
A Fall
A Fall
driving the New York Thruway
later than I mean to
I feel the sky quite near
“twinkle, twinkle, little star…”
you fall
before my eyes
a long, two-second descent
burning out
in slow motion
“how I wonder….”
you’re splendid
in your final journey
then lost to blackness
without violence or alarm
they used to say
the stars were held in place
by hidden pins, behind the ceiling of the sky
like sets of dress shirt studs
or a vast array of jeweled rings
piercing the ears of heaven
did someone pull your pin?
in any case
you’ve gone to where all fallen stars
sleep away the ages,
while I wonder if I ever fall so slowly–
with so much ease
and so much grace
Palm Sunday
On Palm Sunday, my church lasts longer than usual and includes a wide range of emotions. It begins with large portions of the congregation’s going outside the building with their palms. The choir joins them and, after a blessing by the priest, this assemblage enters the narthex, replicating Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. We sing–loudly–“All glory, laud, and honor/ to Thee redeemer king” as the procession winds its way around the perimeter of the church and parishioners find their seats. So that’s the happy part. The rest of the 90 minutes is spent pondering the sad journey Jesus undertook during the last week of his life. What we sing is written in minor keys and what we say is painfully sad. A cantor speaks to how Jesus is reviled: dogs bark at him, people rend his garments and spit on him, he is offered vinegar that turns his stomach. The refrain that we all sing is “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Instead of a short Gospel reading followed by a homily, we hear the long story of that last week and I just weep at how alone this young man was and how betrayed he felt over and over. When he retreats into the Garden of Gathsemane, he asks the apostles he’s brought with him to keep watch in case the police try to take him. Twice he returns to the gate only to find these men sound asleep, so he asks them why they couldn’t stay awake just a little while to help him. Then he tells them he fears betrayal within their midst and Peter boasts that it would never be he, even though Jesus has warned him that he will betray him three times before the cock who proclaims a new day crows. Of course we then hear Peter sputter eagerly to three different citizens who say they’ve seen him with Jesus “Oh, no, it’s not I; I never met the man, I never was there.” When the reader tells us the rooster is crowing, I feel like I may not be able to stay in my seat; this story is just too painful. Finally, we hear about Pilate, who cannot act on what he knows is true–there is no evidence at all that Jesus is guilty of anything. This part of the gospel reminds me pointedly of all the current politicians–of all stripes, sadly–who mimic this stance, saying they know one truth but then being unwilling to act on that knowledge.
Every year at this service, I feel the same thing: We as a culture just keep doing what was done way back then in Jerusalem: we create heroes/saviors who shine for a short while before we turn against them and disavow all knowledge of them. In Jesus’ case, his community goes from throwing down carpets to line his path and waving triumphant palms before his donkey’s hooves to hammering nails into his hands and feet and leave him to die a slow and torturous death on a cross. Amazingly enough, they do this in the tiny span of only six days. So when we end this service by singing “What wondrous love is this, oh my soul, oh my soul,” I wonder indeed.
Alvin Ailey Magic
I’ve been watching the amazing dancers who work with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company since their first time to perform in Minneapolis, decades ago when they toured cities in the US. That night, I watched spell-bound as Judith Jamieson, a lead member of the corps, sashayed across our stage, left to right, jubilant and feisty under what has become a signature white parasol in one of the iconic moments in “Revelations.” The company has become one of this country’s premier artistic organizations, showing any who see them that black lives not only matter but can offer us all beauty and energy and focused passion. These days, I travel to Chicago every early March to see two nights of their offerings, a pilgrimage from which I have just returned. I want to say something about what I saw this time.
First of all, the Chicago audience adores these dancers and is made up of about 70% black people and 30% white people. This means the company (composed of young black women and men except for one Hispanic man, one Asian woman and two white men) gets great waves of appreciation and support from us in the seats, something that only fuels the hypnotic energy displayed on stage. I saw two new works, two older pieces rethought by current choreographers, a solo number (“In/Side”) that was unbelievably difficult and perfectly executed by Solomon Dumas, a relatively new member of the company. I saw a duo, danced with great verve and delight, to music provided by Ella Fitzgerald in one of her impeccable scat numbers in which she seems not to have bothered to breathe. And, of course, I saw “Revelations,” that crucial early piece so important to Alvin himself and so poorly received initially by New York City critics because of their unexamined racial stereotypes about who could dance and to what they could do that.
What I want to speak to now are those two performances of the story of sin and redemption, set in a Gospel modality. This is the fourth generation of dancers to render the scenes, so there is the chance of its having become a ritual without the original conviction felt by Jamieson and her fellow dancers. But nothing could be further from the truth. These young people are not just doing the “Ailey thing” to please the audience. I felt and saw their total commitment to being the very best ensemble from the moment the curtain rises to show them compacted into a sentient whole as they speak about being ‘buked’ but not broken. Though about twelve dancers thrust splayed fingers into the air or arch their individual arms to look like large birds intent upon flying away from danger, what I feel is a single organism, a community speaking and moving as one against injustice and sorrow. These days, the audience breaks into applause as soon as we see them, offering some kind of second-hand support for the journey about to be presented.
As the segments unfold–the single male sinner who wants to be “ready to put on that long white robe” of forgiveness and redemption; the three men still racing with that special energy we aren’t quite ready to give up sinning; the marvelous group of church women with their tiny stools and large fans, who congregate to share gossip and witness to Jesus’ goodness; the group in white gossamer waving tall banners and great cloth strips that become the water through which the lead dancers must “wade” to cross over into paradise; and the final assembly who sing over and over “Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham” as they and we magically know that goodness really can exist, even when the odds seem to project otherwise.
And then they all stop moving and most of us, black and white together, stand and shout and understand something for a few moments. Grateful, the dancers invite us to clap on the off-beat so they can keep going for a little longer. And lots of us do just that, caught up in a magic moment outside of time and the 24-hour news cycles that fragment and dishearten us. I keep expecting some of the audience to step out into the aisles and imitate the steps of our performers, or for some of them to leap down from the stage and move among us. That doesn’t happen, but the possibility hangs in the air. I only hope Alvin Ailey’s spirit somehow knows that this story in movement that he envisioned and formulated so long ago can still enliven both dancers and watchers, that those initial white critics were just plain wrong about who can dance and to what music.