This week missed the traditions that linked my high school community at Emma Willard. I have been experiencing a more-than-usually intense Holy Week as rehearsals with the Salt Lake Choral Artists for the St. Matthew Passion ramped up. And up, and up, until our Good Friday performance last night which was... breathtaking to be part of.
I have wished to share with others the intensity of the feeling I have being part of the telling of the Easter story this week. This is, for me, the most powerful part of the Christian calendar, Thursday and Friday of Jesus' final supper and then conviction and crucifiction. Easter is, by contrast, not an important or compelling part of the story for me. I think Jesus defeats death in the way he dies, not in the way he rises.
Anyway, the story is so powerful, I want to be able to talk about it with people who are around me. I love working in a multi-cultural school, but this week I wished I were working in a Catholic school so we could talk about the power of Holy Week, the feelings and thoughts that come up this week. There is such power in being part of a story together - knowing the important parts and communing over them.
At Emma Willard, part of this story was Revels, the play we put on at Christmas. The roles were the same from year to year, but who played them was a secret until the performance night. The songs we sang on stage were part of the tradition. The idea of being at a great feast together to celebrate the year was part of the tradition.
There are other parts of Emma Life that speak of a shared narrative. For me some of the biggest ones were the award ceremonies for upper class women. At Honors Convocation and the awards night in the spring juniors and seniors received awards for their accomplishments and their service to the community. It was an important part of our shared lives, as if we were affirming: "This is what we honor and value in this community - hard work, authenticity, service, creativity..."
I wonder if my school, if a public school with a highly mobile and highly diverse population, can achieve this sense of tradition. At five years old, it seems that we don't have too much shared narrative at the school. The students arrive with much in common as immigrants - how significant is it that I, the teacher, don't share that part of their story?
I was surprised by the conviction with which I spoke to the Alto next to me last night about the power of the story of the passion.
I was even more surprised this morning when, as I read The Alchemist, my heart fairly fluttered as Jesus was mentioned. The story at this point focuses on a Andalusian shepherd working in a north African crystal shop, about to start a caravan toward Egypt in the company of Arab Muslims. The shepherd meets an Englishman, and when he asks what the Englishman thinks of shepherds, the Englishman responds, "It was shepherds who were the first to recognize a king that the rest of the world refused to acknowledge."
I felt my spirit flip as I read this allusion to Jesus' birth, because here was a shingle of "my" story, embedded in a wall of shingles from other traditions. I could locate myself in this story, all of a sudden. It became much more "mine" in that moment. Which is funny because I don't even believe most of what Christians believe about Jesus! But it's the power of story here I'm talking about, not of truth.
This article talks about the Muslim perspective on Jesus, which is actually closer to what I believe than the Christian one (Jesus was a prophet, was not the son of God, did not resurrect). But still I felt more at home yesterday in the Cathedral of the Madeleine listening to the choir sing Pergolesi's Stabat Mater Dolorosa (about the Virgin's woes) than I would have in a mosque.
Even though I don't believe in the virgin birth, I find the story compelling, and I certainly feel for Mary's pain at the foot of the cross, even if it never happened. This story contains the power of fiction which I try to harness for my students all year long: the power of tapping into universal themes and feeling a connection to tradition by linking those themes with your own experience.
Anyway, the story is so powerful, I want to be able to talk about it with people who are around me. I love working in a multi-cultural school, but this week I wished I were working in a Catholic school so we could talk about the power of Holy Week, the feelings and thoughts that come up this week. There is such power in being part of a story together - knowing the important parts and communing over them.
At Emma Willard, part of this story was Revels, the play we put on at Christmas. The roles were the same from year to year, but who played them was a secret until the performance night. The songs we sang on stage were part of the tradition. The idea of being at a great feast together to celebrate the year was part of the tradition.
There are other parts of Emma Life that speak of a shared narrative. For me some of the biggest ones were the award ceremonies for upper class women. At Honors Convocation and the awards night in the spring juniors and seniors received awards for their accomplishments and their service to the community. It was an important part of our shared lives, as if we were affirming: "This is what we honor and value in this community - hard work, authenticity, service, creativity..."
I wonder if my school, if a public school with a highly mobile and highly diverse population, can achieve this sense of tradition. At five years old, it seems that we don't have too much shared narrative at the school. The students arrive with much in common as immigrants - how significant is it that I, the teacher, don't share that part of their story?
I was surprised by the conviction with which I spoke to the Alto next to me last night about the power of the story of the passion.
I was even more surprised this morning when, as I read The Alchemist, my heart fairly fluttered as Jesus was mentioned. The story at this point focuses on a Andalusian shepherd working in a north African crystal shop, about to start a caravan toward Egypt in the company of Arab Muslims. The shepherd meets an Englishman, and when he asks what the Englishman thinks of shepherds, the Englishman responds, "It was shepherds who were the first to recognize a king that the rest of the world refused to acknowledge." I felt my spirit flip as I read this allusion to Jesus' birth, because here was a shingle of "my" story, embedded in a wall of shingles from other traditions. I could locate myself in this story, all of a sudden. It became much more "mine" in that moment. Which is funny because I don't even believe most of what Christians believe about Jesus! But it's the power of story here I'm talking about, not of truth.
This article talks about the Muslim perspective on Jesus, which is actually closer to what I believe than the Christian one (Jesus was a prophet, was not the son of God, did not resurrect). But still I felt more at home yesterday in the Cathedral of the Madeleine listening to the choir sing Pergolesi's Stabat Mater Dolorosa (about the Virgin's woes) than I would have in a mosque.
 |
| Cathedral Choir School |
Even though I don't believe in the virgin birth, I find the story compelling, and I certainly feel for Mary's pain at the foot of the cross, even if it never happened. This story contains the power of fiction which I try to harness for my students all year long: the power of tapping into universal themes and feeling a connection to tradition by linking those themes with your own experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment