When Time Stands Still

Today is Holy Friday in the Orthodox Church. Christ's passion has begun, and he is hanging on the cross, or tree, as we sing. At 3pm, we will begin the solemn vespers where he will be taken from the cross and entombed.  Tonight, we will sing lamentations at his tomb.  The curtain of temple is rent in two, the earth quakes.  We sing all these things in the present tense.  We do not not think of our worship as a cultural memory, or something we do as a remembrance, we participate with Christ in his voluntary passion.  We suffer with him, we are the wise thief on his right hand, we enter the tomb with him, all in the hope that we will enter the Resurrection with him.  The Orthodox idea of time is not linear.  It's more like dropping a pebble into a pond - all the circles at once, never ending circles, but still. Time stands still, and at the same time, it rushes all around - all of it, at the same time.  It's a mystery.

Another Great Lent has ended.  Another Holy Week - my 17th as choir director here. I look back on other Great Lents - how many has it been? 39, I think.... since 1976 when I began this Orthodox journey. Last Sunday was my 39th Palm Sunday and tomorrow night will be my 39th Pascha.  Has this journey changed me at all?  39 years is a long time - enough time to have rubbed some of my rough places smooth, enough time to have grown a tiny bit in wisdom, in love, in charity.  Enough time to have let go of one or two ugly things and grasped a firm hold of the beautiful.  Not enough time to have become who I was created to be. Not enough time to reach that point where I can see God in every person.  Not enough time run joyfully forward towards my creator.  Not enough time to understand the inner workings and belchings of my heart. Not enough time to learn self discipline in my prayer life. Not enough time to move from judging others and judging only myself.

I will be 60 on my next birthday. I guess I'm a grown up now. I've buried both my parents and my husband. I live far from my daughter and we have developed a healthy separation as well as a healthy need for each other.  It is not a dysfunctional relationship any longer and I'm grateful. I live far from all my family, and although I miss them, and miss my parents most of all. I am on a high trapeze without a net, without anyone else to rely on, other than myself.  And that is the crux of the problem.

Time has stood still and I take stock. I find myself curiously dispassionate about myself and my greatest sin - that of holding fast to myself.  If both of my hands are full of me, how can I grasp that hand that is outstretched toward me?  How can I grasp that hand outstretched on the Cross?  I don't know how to let go of myself.

That's what I'll pray for today, as we sing the mesmerizing Noble Joseph.