Over Afternoon Tea

Tea is not only a drink but a ritual over which people have been relaxing, talking, and catching up on each other's lives for centuries. This blog is intended to serve as a virtual cup of tea, helping me keep in touch with friends and family in my physical absence.

Palm Crosses

This last Sunday, according to Orthodox usage, palms were distributed and blessed in the Chapel in honor of the day. Before carrying on with the service, Fr. Gerasimos told us that they were given out to be held as symbols of victory. So I stood holding my palm in my hand.

As is usual for the Greek Orthodox Church, the palms were not handed out in their natural state. Thanks to the efforts of the first-year class here at the school, they'd been folded into little crosses, creating a product reminiscent of stiff and simplified oregami. The faithful will take them home and wedge them behind icons hung on the wall. They will dry naturally there and remain throughout the Paschal period or the whole year (or until whenever somebody finally remembers to take them out and burn them) as visible reminders of victory.

And yet, I thought, looking at the little palm cross in my hand, the symbol of victory has been twisted into a symbol of defeat and a horrible death. And that is where, so often, I leave things. I am a child of the post-modern age. I smile at beams of sunlight but they are somehow polluted by my only-too-intimate knowledge of long cloudy winters. I am entranced by the first green leaves of spring but the fact that they will fall away and die only too soon taints their life. I am all too aware of the death and darkness in this world, poisoning all the good and beauty. Phrases like "where's the catch?" and "it won't last" are an engrained part of my vocabulary. It's so much more safe, so much more suave, to be cynical. To deny that there can be any happiness in the world because somewhere, I am sure, someone is suffering. John D. Caputo, in his book On Religion, comments that wearing gold crosses around our necks is as strange as wearing little gold electric-chair earrings. The sophisticated world laughs and rages at us. How could we, how dare we be joyful? Our own God has died! And by our own admission, the palm of victory, which the Hebrew children offered crying "Hosanna," has become a cross.

But it doesn't stop there. Death itself becomes the means of destroying death. The instrument of the Romans' most feared torture is used to break the unbreakable gates of Hell and becomes a symbol of victory over death, adorning tombs of the faithful in a tacit vow: this is not over yet; He'll be back for you. Pain and death and darkness are entered and exploded by the Light and Life. And this is the hushed, brooding joy of Holy Saturday that will explode uncontainably in the Resurrection Service of Pascha. This is why we have an Icon of Christ crucified and we adorn it with roses. Not because pain is 'OK' or because we will somehow be remunerated for it in the next world, but because 'through the Cross joy has come into all the world.' By embracing the Cross, our own pains and sorrows, and turning them over to God, they are filled with, transfigured by joy, and life is not about trying to avoid pain, but transforming it. This is why we twist palms into crosses and attach them to icons of the Resurrection. This is why I'm standing in the chilly Church early on Sunday morning when a significant part of me would like to be in bed. Because somewhere inside I remember that that joy exists, and it is only found here. May God grant us all the strength and courage to live that joy.

Happy Easter.