T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Wasteland,” starts with the famous line, “April is the cruelest month…” I used to wonder what that meant. But the poem goes on “…breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.” How beautiful this continuation, which clarifies the beginning, leading me now to presume Eliot meant that April’s rejuvenation is cruel because it reminds us of both our “dead” past and a “hopeful” future, of the end and of the beginning.
Spring’s beginning was exploding all around me in early April as I walked the short two blocks to an Easter Sunday service in Brown Memorial Church, which I attend on special occasions. It was a beautiful, warm, clear day. The pink and white blossoms of ornamental cherry trees and Bradford pears, scattered around the streets of my neighborhood here on Bolton Hill, seemed purposely flung up against a perfect, deep-blue sky, as though designed to lure us to look to the heavens for beauty, glorious relief from the straightforward view of our more ordinary, winter lives. Even the yellowy-green of new leaves, tentative sprouts on the dark, seemingly dead branches of the maple trees, forecast the coming spring, the April renewal of Eliot’s poem. Inside the church, dedicated in 1870 to the memory of George Brown, a son of Alex Brown, the air was heavy with the scent of an extravagance of white Easter lilies and giant purple hyacinths, perfumed messengers of the season.
At the door, I was warmly welcomed by the traditional church greeters who pass out programs and who met me with a smile, thinly disguising their natural curiosity about this stranger to their congregation. I found a seat at the end of a pew far enough in the back of the church to fully see and enjoy the huge stained glass windows in the north and south transepts, two of the dozen windows made for the church by the Louis Comfort Tiffany Studio in 1910. Their brilliant and complicated colors, some made from many layers of glass, have always been an inspiration. The organist was playing a prelude by Bach, one my mother had often played for Sunday services in our Methodist Brick Church on Main Street in the little town where I grew up. I nodded to the others seated in my pew and settled in, reading the program and marking the pages for the hymns. Above me, the groined arches of the ceiling, painted a brilliant blue and accented with lines of deep red and gold leaf, rose dramatically, crossing over and back, over and back in a timeless, majestic rhythm, a lovely counterpoint to the ordered Bach. Their supporting columns, carved in granite grape vines, climb ever upward, with a ribbon of gold leaf interwoven among the fruit. It’s a truly beautiful church, helpful to a spiritual atmosphere and one where, when that time comes, I hope my memorial service will be held.
The first hymn was the familiar “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” A-a-a-a-le-lu-a-a-lu-u-ia. I know it well enough to try the bass. As I was singing, gaining confidence in my ability to still read music, I felt that smarting in the back of your eyes that forecasts tears. I didn’t think much about it but went on with the hymn, concentrating on the bass line and finishing the hymn with a calm “amen.” We all sat down. The pastor, Reverend Conner, a short and youngish man, with coal dark hair and eyes, and the white skin of the truly Irish – obviously greatly talented, and maybe a little proud to have been selected for such a lofty church – usually delivers a message I find worthwhile even though his delivery is a little too dramatic for my taste. My sister, who attends church more regularly than I, tells me that’s now the “style.” Despite my slight distaste for this quality of his sermon, another feature of his tenure that I heartily endorse comes early in the service, when he calls all the little children to the front of the church where they sit on the steps to the altar and he tries to tell them, at their level of understanding, what this Sunday’s message is all about. In this service, he asked them if knew what day it was.
“Easter,” they said, more or less in unison. “Easter!”
“And what do we say on Easter?” he prompted.
There was a chorus of alleluias.
“Yes,” the pastor said. “Alleluia. Now do you know what that means?” he asked.
There was a lull as the children thought. Their parents hadn’t prepared them for this question. Then one precocious little boy yelled, “Yippee!”
The pastor laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Yippee! It is a time of celebration.” And he went on to explain that Easter celebrates Christ’s triumph over death, the promise of everlasting life for all of us. Yippee!
As the children came back to their seats, I felt that smarting at the back of my eyes again. I tightened my jaw and was relieved to be able to prevent tears from gathering. The service continued.
The anthem was a difficult, modern piece of music. Accompanied by a special brass and timpani ensemble as well as the booming organ, the choir struggled through the piece with admirable enthusiasm, coordinated by the waving arms and flying hair of the director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. Dramatic, I thought. But maybe just a little too ambitious. I repressed my tears.
Reverend Connor’s sermon, didn’t stem from the children’s yippee-theme, which was a shame. (When discovering that Christ’s body is gone, Mary Magdalene has a “Yippee Moment.” But then, from all I know of him, the reverend is not an extemporaneous kind of guy.) Instead, he’d obviously and carefully prepared a sermon that began with the story of how the disciples were not expecting Christ’s resurrection, even though He had predicted it to them several times. This theme segued into the pastor’s main message: we should learn to recognize and accept the unexpected inspirational events that naturally crop up in our everyday lives, and use them toward our, and our brethren’s, better future. It wasn’t a bad message and even though I thought he could have done so much more with “Yippee,” it still brought more tears to my eyes, warm soft streams down my cheeks I could no longer suppress. I finally had to take the white handkerchief out of the breast pocket of my coat and wipe my eyes.
Collection was gathered by the children, tentatively holding out the collection plates at each pew while their mothers hovered behind and prompted when necessary. Communion was also given and I joined the line from my pew to receive the bread and dip it in the wine, trying not to get two pieces instead of one and being careful not to drip the wine outside the golden cup. “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Wash away your sins. Be renewed. I had to swallow hard.
The final hymn was the Alleluia Chorus from Handel’s “Messiah.” The choir
spread out individually down the aisles of the church so each member could be nearer the congregation. A tenor standing at the end of my pew managed all those alleluias quite admirably while I, trying valiantly to match him in the bass line syncopation, got hopelessly lost several times. By the time we reached the great “amen,” tears were rolling down my cheeks in force. I wiped them away with my handkerchief. The congregation lingered, as it always does, and I was the second person out of the church door, quickly shaking Reverend Connor’s hand and telling him I had enjoyed his Easter message.
On the way home, I wondered what had made me weep. Was it the Bach I’d heard so many times before? Or the familiarity of an Easter hymn? Was it the beauty of the Tiffany windows, shining such brilliantly colored light into my Sunday morning? Was it the thought of the perpetual innocence of children, running yippee-forward into such a troubled world? Maybe it was the residue of an unexpressed grief over my mother’s death now almost a year and a half ago. Or was it thoughts of endings and beginnings, of a childhood filled with dreams now no longer possible to realize? Or maybe, just maybe, it was all that pollen from a beautiful but cruel, exploding April spring.
