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| A Catholic Church in Maine Photo by: Me |
I am not Catholic. That feels like an odd way to open a
post, so allow me to tell you why that matters. I was out of town over Easter
weekend this year. I was on a work trip. My co-worker that is here with me is
Catholic. I attended Easter mass with him, and then we visited a local national
park. The whole day was a beautiful combination of the familiar and the foreign
at the same time. The experience made me think of home and family and my dad
and standing on cliffs over the ocean and ritual and freedom and… well, it made
me think about a lot of things.
Let’s start with the mass. My dad was a pastor in the United
Methodist Church (UMC) when I was a kid. The UMC has, as the name suggests, a
methodical order of service. It follows (or followed when I was a kid, I haven’t
been to a UMC service in quite some time) a predictable and reliable order of
service. You know when they’ll read the liturgy, when they’ll sing the hymns, and
when the pastor will preach the sermon. The format is cast is stone. The
particulars, which hymns are sung and what is said in the sermon, are drawn
with chalk on that stone framework each week only to be wiped off and drawn
again the next.
The Catholic mass I attended was similar enough that it brought me back to childhood. There was a toddler running back and forth between her parents and grandparents on pew in front of me. She could have been my little sister or brother when I was a child. There was a kid a few pews up doing his best to stay awake. His head kept slumping to the armrest to his right. That was me thirty-something years ago. There were hymnals and an order of service.* The priest wore a white robe just like my dad did. It made me a little dizzy, like living a memory.
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| My Dad Dressed for Easter Photo by: Unknown |
It was not a perfect memory though. The priest’s voice was
kind, but it did not boom like my dad’s. The order of service was set, but it
was not the order I knew. The adults around me knew the order of service. They
stood at the right times. Sat at the right times. Kneeled at the right times. It
was like a dance that I almost knew, but it was different enough that I couldn’t
follow in step.** I shook the priest’s hand on the way out of the church, and his
hand was not the big, strong hand of my dad. The dream-like feel broke. This
was not my home, but it was close.
My co-worker and I drove up the coast through small Maine town
after small Maine town. Each town had its own small white chapel with a tall
bell tower surrounded by well maintained houses that were probably constructed
before electricity was common in houses and certainly well before cars were
invented. I imagined that each town was full of people who knew each other just
like their parents and their parents before them. Generations of tradition in a
village lost to time.
About three hours later, we rolled into Acadia National
Park. We were planning on hiking up Mount Cadillac, but the roads leading to it
were closed for construction. The weather was alternating between a light mist
and buckets of rain. I’m told that Acadia National Park is crowded in the
summer, but it was nearly empty on a cold and rainy Easter Sunday. We explored
the rocky trails around the coast, got soaked by the rain, and watched the
rolling waves crash against the rocks. This, too, felt like home. It reminded
me of hiking with Ryan and James in the Selkirk Mountains in Idaho when we were
teenagers and storm watching on the Oregon coast.
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| Acadia National Park Photo by: Me |
I missed my family that day. Wished they could have seen the gorgeous stained-glass windows of the church. Wished they could have watched Maine roll by outside the car window with me. Wished they could have laughed in the rain with me. Wished they could have stood in quiet awe at the Atlantic Ocean as it thundered amiably on the coast.
I was surprised to find pieces of home in Maine. I found
echoes of my father and his church. I found echoes of youthful adventures in
the trails and trees and rain. I found that familiar feeling of awe at the
beauty of God’s handiwork. But this, this place of home-like echoes, is not
home. I am writing this in a quiet hotel room in Maine, but by the time you
read this I will probably be home with my wife and kids. I will go to my church
which is more free-form than methodical. I will hike trails I know and see a different
ocean.
I find myself wondering if the things I love at home and the
echoes I found in Maine aren’t really echoes themselves of some deeper home. Shapes
and shadows of the world that is waiting for us.
But our
citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring
everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they
will be like his glorious body.
Philippians 3:20-21 (NIV)
I’ll leave you with a ritual, a call and response that has
likely been part of Christian Easter celebrations since the days of the first
disciples.
Call: He is risen.
Response: He is risen indeed.
Love,
Tom
*There is something about holding a hymnal that feels holy
to me. Flipping through the pages. Running my fingers along the words of each
verse and feeling the soft rasp of the paper. The way the words are bracketed
by the music notes that look to my un-music-educated eyes like arcane scroll
work.
**The familiar but different nature is not entirely surprising. The UMC is a protestant denomination that was accidentally started by John Wesley in the late 1700s. The denomination split from the Anglican Church (AKA the Church of England) which previously split from the Roman Catholic church in the 1500s. So the UMC is a branch of a branch of the Roman Catholic church. It is, in other words, a dance that was born from a dance that was born from a dance. The tune is similar, but the steps have changed over the last half millennia.
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