(no subject)
Mar. 23rd, 2008 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adiva_calandiaSo, some thoughts on Easter Vigil masses while I continue to avoid homework:
A few weeks ago, we read Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite. I talked about it some here, I'm pretty sure. Most everyone in the class either didn't understand it, didn't like it, or both, largely because of the final scene: Agave, still in a Dionysian frenzy, hoists her son Pentheus' head onto a pole in triumph. Cadmus, her father, finally makes her see that it's her son, not a lion, and she breaks down -- but then the head begins to jet red liquid. "More blood, always blood," mourns Cadmus, but Tiresias (who has to be there to make it a real Greek tragedy) tastes the liquid and murmurs, "It's wine." The people -- the nobles, the slaves, everyone -- slowly move forward and drink.
The class -- including the prof -- thought that this was weird, kind of gross, incomprehensible, and comic.
I was the only one who felt like it was both understandable and beautiful.
I tried to explain why I felt like that. I wrote up a whole presentation comparing Dionysus to Christ, and I tried to explain the sacrament of communion by the seat of my pants (which is pretty well impossible). Finally, I said that we as a class don't have context for something that is both joyful and solemn and sad and ritualistic all at the same time, and without any kind of personal, emotional context, we can't understand the play.
But I understood it, I thought to myself, because of Easter Vigil.
When my mom explained to me what to expect from a Vigil mass, she said, "It's really pagan," and that description has stuck with me. It is. You have all these people sitting in darkness, and then fire is carried in and passed from person to person in the form of candles, until everyone is holding a tiny, fragile light. Even all together, those lights can't fill the darkness.
It's a vigil. We, like the women, are grieving in the dark, scared and sad.
And then the sun -- the Son -- the new year, the light, spring, warmth, joy, returns and all the lights in the church come on and banish the night, the Devil, the old, the darkness, winter and cold and sorrow, and the people sing Glory.
And it doesn't stop with the lights. Later in the ceremony comes the ritual cleansing with water, the promises to live right (because that's all baptismal promises are, really; they're an expression of faith, but they're a promise to love and live, too), the welcoming of the community.
And the congregation sings Praise and Yes. Yes. Say alleluia, say amen. I take death with me, out of time, and make of it a path, a birth. And he sun with its brightness, and the earth with its starkness -- all these I place . . .
We drink the wine that is blood, eat the bread that is flesh, symbols for rituals much, much older, much scarier, powerful rituals and rites.
But if you haven't experienced it -- maybe if you haven't been raised in it, maybe if you've never stood in front of a congregation and asked them to raise their voices in song and joined yours with theirs to say, in joy and relief, that light has returned to the world -- if you don't have that context, as none of my classmates do, then perhaps it makes sense, a sad sort of sense, that you can't understand why drinking Pentheus' blood need not be horrifying, or comic. It can be terrible, but joyful; elated, but mournful.
I'm sure there are other ceremonies, holidays, experiences like this in other faiths -- Passover? Diwali? And lacking context, the way my classmates lack context for my Christian experiences, perhaps I can't understand them the same way people who are raised in them can. I want to try, though.
(As long as I'm mentioning examples I tried to use for solemnity and joy all at once, I should probably say that one of the other examples I gave -- visually -- was Woodstock. Soyinka says in his stage directions that the Bacchae's frenzies should have the feel of a rock concert, so I feel justified in that.)
A few weeks ago, we read Wole Soyinka's The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite. I talked about it some here, I'm pretty sure. Most everyone in the class either didn't understand it, didn't like it, or both, largely because of the final scene: Agave, still in a Dionysian frenzy, hoists her son Pentheus' head onto a pole in triumph. Cadmus, her father, finally makes her see that it's her son, not a lion, and she breaks down -- but then the head begins to jet red liquid. "More blood, always blood," mourns Cadmus, but Tiresias (who has to be there to make it a real Greek tragedy) tastes the liquid and murmurs, "It's wine." The people -- the nobles, the slaves, everyone -- slowly move forward and drink.
The class -- including the prof -- thought that this was weird, kind of gross, incomprehensible, and comic.
I was the only one who felt like it was both understandable and beautiful.
I tried to explain why I felt like that. I wrote up a whole presentation comparing Dionysus to Christ, and I tried to explain the sacrament of communion by the seat of my pants (which is pretty well impossible). Finally, I said that we as a class don't have context for something that is both joyful and solemn and sad and ritualistic all at the same time, and without any kind of personal, emotional context, we can't understand the play.
But I understood it, I thought to myself, because of Easter Vigil.
When my mom explained to me what to expect from a Vigil mass, she said, "It's really pagan," and that description has stuck with me. It is. You have all these people sitting in darkness, and then fire is carried in and passed from person to person in the form of candles, until everyone is holding a tiny, fragile light. Even all together, those lights can't fill the darkness.
It's a vigil. We, like the women, are grieving in the dark, scared and sad.
And then the sun -- the Son -- the new year, the light, spring, warmth, joy, returns and all the lights in the church come on and banish the night, the Devil, the old, the darkness, winter and cold and sorrow, and the people sing Glory.
And it doesn't stop with the lights. Later in the ceremony comes the ritual cleansing with water, the promises to live right (because that's all baptismal promises are, really; they're an expression of faith, but they're a promise to love and live, too), the welcoming of the community.
And the congregation sings Praise and Yes. Yes. Say alleluia, say amen. I take death with me, out of time, and make of it a path, a birth. And he sun with its brightness, and the earth with its starkness -- all these I place . . .
We drink the wine that is blood, eat the bread that is flesh, symbols for rituals much, much older, much scarier, powerful rituals and rites.
But if you haven't experienced it -- maybe if you haven't been raised in it, maybe if you've never stood in front of a congregation and asked them to raise their voices in song and joined yours with theirs to say, in joy and relief, that light has returned to the world -- if you don't have that context, as none of my classmates do, then perhaps it makes sense, a sad sort of sense, that you can't understand why drinking Pentheus' blood need not be horrifying, or comic. It can be terrible, but joyful; elated, but mournful.
I'm sure there are other ceremonies, holidays, experiences like this in other faiths -- Passover? Diwali? And lacking context, the way my classmates lack context for my Christian experiences, perhaps I can't understand them the same way people who are raised in them can. I want to try, though.
(As long as I'm mentioning examples I tried to use for solemnity and joy all at once, I should probably say that one of the other examples I gave -- visually -- was Woodstock. Soyinka says in his stage directions that the Bacchae's frenzies should have the feel of a rock concert, so I feel justified in that.)
no subject
Date: 2008-03-23 09:52 pm (UTC)