congregamus

[congregamus]

It was not a contested issue before January, but it has become inescapable how much hate has overcome this country. That this place is obsessed with "health" is the obvious shadow for how toxic it is, and how much poison it produces.

[congregamus]

In utter denial that I have to go in to work for *any* amount of time today, no matter how small. After the amount of unpaid overtime Holy Week demands? No thanks.

The new boss arrives today, though. So it is good to go welcome. (I know, it's not that bad. I'm just tired.)

[congregamus]

COME ON BABEY CADAVER SYNOD

CADAVER SYNOD 2 BABEY

[congregamus]

I'm shocked that my body is not in open protest of me today. Over 24 hours, I had to break down, haul, re-construct, and then return a functional church from a banquet hall to a Tudor-style collegiate commons, and back again. TBCH, I'm surprised I can walk this Easter Monday.

[congregamus]

Trying to convince myself not to roll my eyes every time I hear self-righteous Anglican priests use the phrase "The Bishop of Rome" this week.

[congregamus]

Work means I can't avoid the Vatican. As an institution, it doesn't mean much to me. (As a museum? So important!)

[congregamus]

I *know* you wish you were me already out the door at 6a on a Sunday.

[congregamus]

I just did the math.

About 40 hours of my labor have been stolen from me in the last few weeks. No one intends to pay me for the work. When I told the person who's technically my supervisor at the moment, he said, "After Easter, you can just take some time off..."

OK, but will y'all actually let me have the time without generating false emergencies and contacting me about them? Highly fucking unlikely.

I reckon I'd have had to give up the ghost, too, to be allowed to sleep in this morning. Church worker's perspective is that the only reason Jesus gets to sleep in on Holy Saturday was because he was actually dead.

[congregamus]

I drew the VII/Swords this morning. I wrote in my journal,

Of course — the Judas card. What to do with Judas? With treachery?

But Judas has been well managed, especially by the writer of the eponymous non-canonical gospel. I suppose the thing to do with Judas is to leave him to Jesus; else one must become Christ, and that is not an advisable pedestrian path.

[congregamus]

On Good Friday

Today confirms: everything is lost. The absolute worst we imagined has happened. It is catastrophic. Numbing grief. 

We follow the stations of the Cross at an emotional and psychological distance that relates to how much we can handle of this day, so saturated in tragedy. The Mystery regularly asks a lot of us, but today? Today broke even Jesus.

Today asks a lot of us because it asks more questions than it answers. Maybe the biggest question — at least to me — might just be WHY? 

WHY WAS THIS ALLOWED?

Well, first of all, it was allowed because we allow it. We’re allowing it right now. It is easy to blame the crowd in the story. But we’re still the same crowd. And the exact same thing is happening again. Right. Now. And we’re allowing it.

It starts small. We just turn away and pretend not to notice something we know is wrong. If we do that enough times, it ends up with innocent people dead. Today will not allow us our usual habit of looking away. 

 It demands we gaze upon the end result of what we will allow.

O all you who pass by, look and see If there be any sorrow like my sorrow?

It is ugly. It is bloody. It is barely human, but if we say that it’s not, we know that we are still lying to ourselves, and looking away from the truth, which is none other than Christ crucified.

What a sad, sad story. 

Jesus’s story. Our story. Our stories. One of the saddest stories that we tell ourselves is that it had to happen this way.  No, it didn’t. 

No, it didn’t.

It did happen, though. It did happen in all its horror and blood.

BUT. (This turning is the entirety of Christian understanding, so listen up.)

But somehow, God was still able to communicate through one of the absolute worst ways of killing we as a human race have been able to invent that we are loved beyond understanding and to transform OUR WORST into absolute inestimable beauty and the pinnacle of our own humanity. 

Because violence is one of the deepest languages we speak, violence was the language God (the Word) used to unveil Godself to us. This revelation of Godself is to us exquisitely beautiful and horrifically ugly at the same time.

Monstrare — the latin verb “to show”, and the source of our word “demonstrate" — contains a verbal breadcrumb of this unveiled terror. A monstrance is the contraption used to contain the sacred host so that it can be shown (revealed) to the devoted. Hence also the word ‘monstra’, or monster. What is revealed is monstrous. (This is just verbal redundancy at one level, but it is sonar-depth theology at another.)

What the Cross reveals is monstrous. Are we able to bear how much God is trying to show us of Godself? It seems we would rather turn away. 

No wonder then God’s cry of abandonment, which is ours, which we insist on, and which he bore, as we, in our unable-to-be-roused passivity insisted, even unto death.

O all you who pass by, look and see: If there be any sorrow like my sorrow?

[congregamus]

Found a black cassock that will work for tomorrow night in case I have to preach on the fly. (The deacon at Jesus Factory #2 woke up with a fever this morning.)

[congregamus]

In solidarity with folks struggling, and as much as I want to keen, I realize that no one wants or needs my Jeremiad. I used to offer them on the daily. Probably for the last 15 years. Didn't help. I'm here if anyone needs verbal space to talk and process grief. That's all the help I've got left.

[congregamus]

I am trying so hard to follow The Mandate (“Love one another as I have loved you”). Sometimes it’s so easy, and sometimes it seems impossible.

[congregamus]

These kids in the last (quiet) metra car were going absolutely berserk. I muttered, “fucking kids” under my breath as I was changing cars. The conductor came up to me at my new seat and said, “Kids bothering you?” / “Yeah, they’re just so unbelievably loud.” / “Oh yeah, they’re like that. What are you gonna do?” / “I don’t know? Maybe tell them to shut up? It’s your house, right? They are doing what you let them.”

You can guess the response. He shrugged and made a face that he hoped would resolve the situation. I just rolled my eyes at him.

Amazing society we’ve got here. 10/10. No notes.

[congregamus]

Something pleasant after having to deal with the post office on Tax Day.

There is a very muted-but-not-silent “Alleluia” on Fullerton Avenue this week.

[congregamus]

Why am I still playing PokémonGO when I know it’s just data mining for a Saudi prince now?

[congregamus]

No, it wasn't great getting started so early this morning, but I'm done with all my domestic chores now that it's lunch. I can take a nice walk and hopefully clear my head.