Flowering the Cross

Since I've only been attending St. Paul's United Church for a few months, their tradition of "flowering the cross" on Easter Sunday came as a bit of a surprise--a lovely one, but it's something I've never seen before.

Everyone is asked to bring at least one flower--any kind--to the service: several, if possible, so any guests can participate if they choose. A plain white cross is set up in front of the communion table and, usually, someone has also left a vase of flowers next to it. What no one can see from the pews is that the cross is covered with chicken wire.

During "the children's time" between the opening hymns and the sermon, the children are told that Jesus was killed using the cross, but, since their families and friends believe he came back to life, decorating the structure with flowers is a way of remembering that. They're asked if they want to do that themselves and are invited to stay long enough to watch all the grown ups do the same before going off to Sunday school in another part of the church.

By the time everyone who wants to has tucked their flowers under the chicken wire, a lovely mixed bouquet is standing in front of the communion table and the service goes on as usual.

As I said, it's a lovely custom. But, somehow, I wasn't in a celebratory mood. Perhaps it's the rotten weather today, or the hesitant appearance of spring this year, or Linus' battle with cancer, or Mother's with congestive heart failure--any number of things. The following poem is what came to mind:

some cover the cross
with flowers
on Easter Sunday
hide pain under joy

turn bad memories
and old hurts
that can’t heal into
something beautiful

denying the pain or
flaunting it

the old soldiers’ wounds
are bandaged
as they smile at praise
and honors

they know what
poison is

Good Friday--the Crucifixion

I'm probably one of the few people who haven't seen Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." For two reasons:

(a)I don't agree with Gibson's anti-Semitism;

and

(b) while I do agree with his portrayal of the crucifixion in all it's horror, I don't need to see fake pain and blood when I've seen enough of the real stuff.

The Romans designed crucifixion as a deterrent to rebellion, and, to their way of thinking, the more tortuous the death, the less likely anyone would want to end up dying that way. (Reminds me of the arguments for the death penalty in today's politics, but that's another story).

We've cleaned things up--a lot. People wear plain crucifixes, jeweled crucifixes, elaborate ones and simple ones. Very few think about what a cross actually meant to the people who died on them or, just as bad, watched their loved ones suffer, unable to do anything about it.

I'm not a traditional Christian--some would say I'm not a Christian at all--but I had an opportunity to see the crucifixion in all its horror through someone else's eyes, and I have never forgotten it.

My children were three and five when our family was invited to their cousin's wedding at St. Peter's Catholic Church in New Westminster, B. C. We arrived early because their father was the family photographer and he wanted to "scope out" the best places. Most Catholic churches have at least a simulacrum of a person on the cross over their altars, but St. Peter's was like nothing I'd ever seen. The Christ figure, had he been standing, would have been at least 9 feet tall, and as lifelike as the artist could make him.

I noted him, but I was my husband's "designated assistant," and I had other things to do. I was setting up camera equipment when my son came up to me and said, very softly, "Mommy, why is that man hanging there?" I started to ask "What man?" but didn't; Dee's eyes looked like he was wearing magnifying spectacles and I could see the altar, the cross and the figure behind him.

I think I said we were not a religious household, but my kids had been taught that Christmas was the celebration of the birth of a very special teacher and Easter was, if not a celebration of his resurrection, a commemoration of his death and of new life. But we had not told a three and five year old how he died.

I put the camera gear down. "Dee, that man isn't alive. He's a statue." I knelt down so our eyes were on the same level. "Do you remember the story of Jesus? That he was a very great teacher?" Dee nodded. "And that the authorities of his time didn't like what he taught and killed him?" He nodded again and whispered, "But why..." and couldn't find any more words. I said, "Why did they make that statue?" He nodded again. "That cross is how they killed him. And people don't want to ever forget what happened or why. So they made that statue."

"He really is a statue?" Dee asked; his eyes were still dilated and almost black, but they were back to their normal size.

"Absolutely." I stood up. "Do you want to come with me and we'll see?" He nodded and took my hand. I'm don't know where his sister had been while we were talking, but she materialized on my other side and the three of us walked the length of the church and up the steps to the altar. I don't remember the rest of our conversation, but it was long enough for their father to set up his camera in the balcony and take a time-lapse photo of the altar, the cross and the three of us standing there.

Colors

green's not spring's color

it's winter's--that and brown if

the ground has no snow

spring shows every color

before the green takes over

from Haiku at 3 a. m.

Pussywillows, Cattails

I can't speak for anyone else, but my memory is stuffed with odd scraps of songs, poems, "wise" adages, quotes from the famous and not-so-famous and (surprisingly!) long passages from favorite books. One of these is the refrain from Gordon Lightfoot's "Pussywillows, Cattails":

Pussywillows, cattails, soft winds and roses

Which is a lovely phrase, evoking various stages of spring after a long cold winter, but, besides the tune, it's all I can remember.

One of the really nice things about being connected to the internet is how easy it can be to find things like words to songs. I just typed in "Gordon Lightfoot" and went from his bio to a list of his songs to the songs themselves

And what did I find? The song is like an exercise in Freud' s free association technique, where one phrase evokes another and that evokes a third and so on and so on. Since no one's mind works exactly like another's, Lightfoot's patterns are different from mine. No wonder I couldn't follow it.

Given that spring has finally arrived to stay, and that is an event worth celebrating, here's the opening and closing stanza:

Pussy willows, cattails, soft winds and roses

Rainpools in the woodland, water to my knees

Shivering, quivering, the warm breath of spring

Pussy willows, cat tails, soft winds and roses

Cats II--Rufus

Bella, Besame, and Zoe aren't the only cats we've had in our lives. For me, the most memorable was Rufus.

Rufus was a chartreuse, one of the oldest breeds in the world. He looked like a Russian Blue, with the same short, rumpled-looking gray coat, but, instead of being long and lean, he looked like a full potato sack on old man legs. He wasn't a "show" cat--his eyes weren't the proper gold/copper color, but the light green of the liqueur that was first made in the French Monastery of Chartreuse. Whoever had owned him previously had neutered him to make certain the "faulty" genes weren't passed on to the next generation.

Rufus appeared at our back door one day and immediately made himself at home. My then- husband said, "we have enough cats in this house" (we had two), took him off to the new housing development a couple of miles away and left him there, telling everyone that "He'll find a good home on his own. He found us, didn't he?"

Are you familiar with the children's song, "The Cat Came Back"? In each verse, a cranky old man tries to get rid of a cat by various ingenious means while the chorus counterpoints with "The cat came back the very next day." So did Rufus, once again walking in the back door as though he owned the place, talking all the while. I could almost hear him saying, "That was an interesting car ride, but I wouldn't want to take another one, thanks. And by the way, I'm starved. When's dinner?"

Well, "Any cat who can find his way back here deserves to stay," and stay he did.

Rufus is the only cat I've ever known who hugged you. Seriously. When someone picked him up, he'd reach as far as he could around that person's neck and purr like a motorcycle climbing a steep hill. Anyone could pick him up, even if he was in the middle of a meal or a nap. With a houseful of teenagers, our own and assorted "strays" (neighborhood kids, foster kids, the foster kids' siblings, etc.) he was the favorite.

He loved humans, but no other life form. Within a week, he was "top cat" and brooked no opposition from anything with more than two legs. He was a great hunter and I was often given "presents" of mice, birds and garter snakes. (Don't ask why I was so favored, I haven't the slightest idea.)

He lived with us for two years, but disappeared the week before we were to move away, as suddenly as he'd appeared. It was January, bitterly cold with an unusual fall of snow. The neighbors' dogs had formed a loose hunting pack and we think he ran afoul of them, or possibly a hungry raccoon. We never even found a tuft of gray fur on the snow or under the trees to tell us what happened.

Cradle Songs

sister to sister
mother to daughter
mother to son

to Canada and back

smooth polished wood
medium brown

carved spindles
define windows
to look outward

bronze hooks and eyes
to swing on
soothe to sleep


craftsman to friend
mother to son
father to son

from Mexico to here

knotted rope
rust colored
define diamonds
wide enough
for small hands
to reach through

heavier rope
to hang from the ceiling
swing in the breeze

protected places

to start our lives

2001

On Being Celtic

I've noticed a lot of mail order catalogs offer books and clothing, jewelry and other do-dads with "Celtic" themes or motifs. And by "Celtic," they don't mean Scots or Welsh, they mean Irish. Shamrocks abound, as do the color green and references to St. Patrick, Blarney Castle and leprechauns.

I'm not knocking this, you understand--with a last name like "Delaney," it's the last thing I want to do--but I do want to note that we've come a long way from the days when businesses posted signs in their windows or put ads in the newspapers saying "Help Wanted. No Irish Need Apply."

A long, long way from my great great grandfather who drove his tinker's wagon into the little town of North Tama, Iowa, with a wife and the name of "DeLaney." Note the capital "L." He didn't want to be considered just a half step above the "colored" people who were less than a generation away from slavery and if capitalizing a letter in the middle of his last name to make it look French would make his family respectable, then that's what he'd do.

Right up into John Kennedy's presidency, you never heard an Irishman called a "Mick" without the name being preceded by "dumb" or "stupid."

So I have to wonder at my father, who went into the Army Air Corps in 1941 as Dick DeLaney and came home in 1945 as Mick Delaney. He said he hated the name "Dick": that when in the service, he'd palled around with 3 other Irishmen whom everyone called "the four Micks" and the name just stuck. He said he thought the capital "L" in the middle of his name was a stupid affectation and went back to the original spelling.

But it must have taken a whole lot of nerve to take two pejoratives and flaunt them in the face of that unspoken but pervasive prejudice. He said it just made sense.

He could put on a brogue that sounded like he'd just stepped off the boat from County Derry, yet he desparaged what he called "professional Irishmen" who got teary eyed over "Danny Boy" on St. Patrick's Day, but never got closer to the "Ould Sod" than New York City; and, though he enjoyed seeing all the "Celtic" artifacts in the catalogues, he'd never buy them. Yet, just before he died, my sister, M. J., gave him a license plate frame that said, "I brake for leprechauns," which he promptly installed on a car that he always kept free of any sort of bumper sticker or aerial ornament.

We wouldn't think of removing it.