Maundy Thursday

Tomorrow is already Good Friday, and what a wonder it is to be this far along in the year already. Our weather has been quite warm, and we had to actually break down and put on the air conditioning last night after the sun baked the house all day long. I am enjoying the lack of pain in the joints, but I will confess that both Mrs. Orr and I sleep better in the colder weather. We both tossed and turned a lot last night due to the closeness of the room, even though we did have the fan on. It’s supposed to be cooler the next three days, and this will snap us back into reality. The season of flannel sheets is receding, and this is good. No more numb toes and nose, feeling like I’m froze.

I have one hummingbird feeder out, but still haven’t yet spied any of them feeding. Any day now. This coming Monday will be the one-year anniversary of their return in 2022, so I know it’s any day now. Any day now until I get to see my little friends again, friends who have been wintering down in the warm Amazonian climes before packing their domino-sized suitcases and buzzing northwards.  The birds of all kinds have been so very active this week. This morning, I looked out in the front garden and saw something that initially alarmed me. A mourning dove was sprawled on the ground on her side, one wing lifting into the air as if she were asking permission to use the restroom or to answer a question posed by the teacher. I started to go outside and see if she was injured, but then I noted the other doves and birds walking calmly around her, seemingly undisturbed by her actions. After just a few seconds, the dove rolled over onto her feet, stood, and strutted through the garden, head to-and-froeing like she was listening to the Bee Gees, and went about her business. I would like to know if she was just relaxing and drying out her wings, or if this is a part of the mating ritual, or if she is an attention-seeking little strumpet? This is what it looks like when doves lie. On the ground.

A pair of Carolina wrens were on the back porch at mid-morning, cutting up and shrieking to the point where I could not ignore them. I went to investigate, wondering if a black snake had arisen early from its hibernation and was troubling them. Turns out they were merely unhappy with the presence of Bluebelle, who was slumbering in what she thinks of as her recliner on the porch. Poor dear has not felt well since yesterday, showing herself very listless and indifferent. She eschewed supper last night and breakfast this morning, but shortly after the wren incident, she stepped off the porch and vomited (vomicked, as my mother would have said) yellow foam and quite a bit of grass. She seemed better after that, and ate a hearty supper this evening. I’ve tried to caution her and Jinx about over-indulging in whatever it is that they seem to find out there in the yard, but they go their own way, and they pay the price.

While I was working today, I had the glass patio door open next to my desk. I was absorbed in a phone call and was startled when I heard a tap on the glass. Standing outside was a pair of young women, one white and slender and sweet-faced, the other one black, staring blankly, and morbidly obese. The black girl was holding a small jug of laundry detergent. They both beamed at me when they saw me peering around the corner at them, and they waved, and I waved back and gave them the “give me a minute” sign, to which they responded with more smiles and waves. The call I was on took quite some time, and I kept looking out the door and repeating the “give me a minute” sign. Finally, after about five minutes, the white lass tapped on the glass again, smiled, and mouthed the words “We’ll talk to you later.” I gave them the “okay” sign and turned back to my work.

Both girls were dressed in white long-sleeved shirts and black slacks. I wondered later if they were Mormons. I’ve never seen female LDS missionaries before, but I suppose they exist. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t get to chat with the young women. I rather enjoy a relaxed back & forth on spiritual topics, especially when I’m on my home turf. Since I was still occupied on my phone call, I didn’t get to see whether they turned into my neighbor’s driveway down the road. Now that’s a conversation I would have loved to have sat in on.

Yesterday evening after I finished work, my wife and I planted the new phlox she bought last week, and they look pretty good there along the rock wall in the front garden. She has two geraniums we need to pot soon; they stink but they’re pretty. I had been somewhat worried that the dogwoods on the farm wouldn’t  bloom by Easter, but I saw this afternoon they they have blossomed out, literally overnight [see below]. The Virginia bluebells are trooping all over the woods just past the back fence, and I picked a bouquet of them for Mrs. Orr, which is sitting on our cold wood stove, and I am grateful that the stove is cold and that the bells are blue and that Bluebelle feels better and that neither my wife nor I am “all stove up,” as my people say.

We are going to try a no-till garden this year. Some time back, we put down plastic to solarize and prepare the garden plot, and I peeked beneath it today. It all seems in order. We’ll see how it goes. We’ll do corn, purple hull peas, okra, and a few other things. Hopefully, the presence of two mean-ass dogs (sorry, Dixee, but you don’t pack the gear to serve in this corps) will deter the boldest of the coons.

We re-watched part of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ last night, and plan to watch the other half tonight. As always, I wept. We did skip over the flogging/torture scene. We’ve seen it enough, and all it does is upset us, and that without giving any spiritual comfort — suffering is a personal thing, a holy thing, and I don’t enjoy watching a depiction of suffering, especially on such a scale. For me, some of the most moving scenes in this film are between Christ and Pilate. Bulgarian actor Hristo Shopov’s portrayal is singular. It reminds me of what I like about George C. Scott’s interpretation of Ebeneezer Scrooge. I do enjoy the old original B&W versions of A Christmas Carol, but they all seem to portray Scrooge as a one-dimensional monster who has but two emotions: cruelty and scorn. But Scott made him human, vulnerable, malleable….with the hope of being reclaimed. So it is with Shopov in the Passion movie. He is no bureaucrat, no bloodless Roman official. He is deeply unsettled by the dilemma presented by this battered Galilean, and divided between the pressures brought to bear by the Jew officials to kill Jesus, as contrasted with the pure, trembling warnings of his wife, Claudia, not to condemn this holy man who has been arrested and arraigned before him. We will pick up tonight at the point where Christ begins His tortured, stumbling walk along the Way of Sorrows.

Speaking of the Via Dolorosa, I recently saw a brief clip of Holy Week celebrations in Jerusalem. The video showed a group of tourists traipsing down the lane where Christ the Lord gripped His heavy cross with bleeding hands through the streets, outside the walls, and up the hill to Golgotha. The tourists all had that Ugly American look, with gaudy clothing and goony grins. The grins. They were all smiling and laughing and pointing and joking and enjoying themselves. And I wondered. I, who am daily wracked with doubt and guilt and spiritual exhaustion, wondered how this could be. How could these people spend the money and take the time to travel overseas to a volatile region of the globe to commemorate the Easter season…how could they saunter down that street with such shorts-and-baseball-cap-nonchalance? Watching that video clip, I found my thoughts becoming mean, cruel, vindictive. I wanted those people with their clean clothes and easy smiles to suffer. I caught myself, and I remembered yet again why it is that I can never be easy and blithe in matters of the faith. For me, it is all serious and all-in… suffering and joy and sacrifice and blessing, or it is nothing. If it comes easy, I want nothing to do with it. I left the Protestant church because I finally saw that it is a pale imitation of a real church. But I have remained outside the Catholic church because all I see are Francis-Grins and Bishop-Backslapping and a whole lotta levity from the clergy and the people in the pews. I cannot and will not trifle with unserious people when it comes to my soul, which I believe to be eternal and precious. For me, it is my soul. It is not a joke, not a social club, not a game. I’d rather wander in the outer darkness, outcast and exiled, than to rub shoulders with the sort of people who will skip down an avenue packed down with dirt which lies above the dried drops of blood that were precious to Saint Veronica, but which are but an unimportant trifle to the obese and overgrown children of today’s “church.”

My anger is ever with me, and I have read and heard countless times through the years that anger stems from fear. I have given this much thought, and I think there’s something to it. Mrs. Orr describes how her daddy would lash out in anger when something happened that deeply frightened him. I have observed this same pattern in my own life. There’s a lovely old B&W movie with Edward G. Robinson called “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes,” and a scene in the movie depicts a farmer’s (Robinson) daughter and a playmate taking a journey down a dangerously flooded river in a tin bathtub. All of the families and villagers fear the children are dead, but they go downriver and look for the children. The bathtub appears, to the families’ great relief….but are the children inside and alive? When the bathtub nears a bridge that crosses the wild river, the men manage to catch it, and… there are the children inside, stunned and exhausted, but alive. When the farmer pulls his little girl from the tub, he crushes her to him and weeps, in relief and gratitude, but then smacks her hard on the bottom and cries out, “Why? Why would you do that?” He drags her by the hand back to their farm, where the distraught mother awaits. I relate very well to this. When something scares me, it makes me angry. Perhaps I am ashamed of my own fear once it has passed and then lash out to show that I’m not really weak. I don’t know. I’ve not yet sussed it out. Every time I look over at the fallen tree in our neighbor’s pasture, awaiting removal and burning, I feel a knot of anger in me. Anger at what? At whom? At the tree? No. I feel angry because I know that the next time the wind rises and disturbs this patch of southern farmland, my insides will be churning. I will be doing that thing Christ warned against time and time again. I will be worrying about what tomorrow will bring. I will be expecting the worst. I will be fearing disaster and expense. All these things I will do unless grace intervenes… and can I call down grace the way I can goad someone with words to fight me or argue with me or debate me? Can I call down tranquility and calm within my own spirit? Oh, Christ of the ancient tales, teach me how I can do this! And if I cannot…what do I do?

If I cannot, then I fear and worry. And that will lead to anger. And anger will lead to that little slick of acid that floats within my belly, waiting for a justification for unbelief and cynicism and self-pity. Behold the doubleminded man, unstable in all his ways. Isn’t that what the good churchfolk would say to me?

But enough of this. I am grateful for the wife sitting next to me in this quiet hour of the dimming of the day. Grateful for eggs and English muffins and Canadian bacon and hashbrowns. Grateful for so much. And yes, I am grateful that I am at least trying to draw near to Him Whom I seek, but Whom I do not understand. Or really trust. Whence this trying? Did it drop down on me the way I pray understanding will do?

Tomorrow is Good Friday, my friends. May it be truly good, for us all.

~ S.K. Orr