Mid-Life Crisis Trip Log--Entry 91: Alleluia choruses

[Robert & Laura]

Alleluia choruses

Sun, Mar 23, 2008
Happy Early Easter! Here in Salem (Oregon) things are blooming right
up, from the pink blossoms of the cherry trees outside the state
capitol to the red camellias right outside our living room window.

Of course, we've been zipping around so much, we've hardly had time to
notice.

SILVER HAIR IN GOLDENDALE
One of the "themes" of our mid-life crisis seems to be funerals.
Seriously. Not two months before we started this whole thing (while we
were in the beginning stages of getting rid of our stuff), our friend
Moe Pourier died and we went to his funeral.

And three months after we started our VISTA jobs, we were at Roy
McDaniel's funeral. And two weeks later, we're in our somber attire
for Sheila McDaniel's memorial service.

There was a time in our lives when we mostly went to birthday parties
(okay, granted, we were clowns and we were paid to entertain at the
birthday parties, but still--we went to a LOT of birthday parties).

Then weddings got popular. Laura has a bunch of cousins all about the
same age who all got married within a few years of each other. For a
while, there, we knew where all the bridal registries in town were.

Now it's funerals.

This time, it's the mother of a high school friend of Laura's who
recently died. Laura's friend, Sharon, has also been a long-time trip-
log reader (Hi, Sharon!) dating back to the very first trip log (The
Dinosaur Dig Trip Log circa 1995), so we feel a special connection.

Sharon wanted some sort of memorial service, but her Mom (Luella)
wasn't a regular church-goer, Sharon's a Lutheran, and the other
relatives include some Mormons and a whole batch of unchurched folks.

Fortunately, Laura confronted a similar situation at Robert's Mom's
funeral (minus the Mormons), so she knew what to do. She designed a
lovely service with a few psalms, some prayers and a couple of Bible
readings, and printed up a batch of service bulletins with a few old-
time hymns.

The Saturday service was set for Goldendale (Washington), which is
near the Columbia gorge and about three hours from Salem. We grab our
funeral duds--Robert's suit that only gets worn at funerals, and at
this rate will need to be replaced in a few years, and Laura's
eggplant-colored Lenten outfit--and head out on Friday night.

We stop at the Portland Airport to pick up Sharon and her son, John,
and continue on to Goldendale where we stay the night at a Quality Inn
that has a TV set AND a microwave AND a refrigerator AND an iron (one
thing that staying at a bunch of $30-a-night motels does is to make
you appreciate regular motel rooms). The TV set even worked!

Saturday morning over breakfast, Sharon and John ask us if Robert
would officiate at the service, since he has a suit and looks official
(it's Robert's $700 Italian suit that we got back when we had money
and it really does make Robert look distinguished--especially when he
wears a shirt with it).

There was a time in our lives when Robert would have pissed and moaned
about how he Wasn't Ready and it Wasn't His Relative and found all
kinds of excuses to not do it (such as never having done anything like
it before). That's kind of changed in the last two years, thanks to
our Mid-Life Crisis. Once you start saying "Yeah, sure!" to people, it
gets kind of addicting, so Robert says "Yeah, sure!" and we head into
town.

The service isn't in town, that's just where we're going to meet one
of Sharon's cousins. The service is at Luella's sister's place. (The
sister is named Vera and we're pretty sure this is the last name we'll
be throwing at you. To recap: Sharon = Laura's friend; Luella =
Sharon's late Mom; Vera = Luella's sister, Sharon's Aunt.)

The word is that finding Vera's place is a little tricky, which is
like saying the presidential race is drawing a little interest. After
ten miles of blacktop that steadily climbs we turn onto "Turkey Ranch
Road" and then make a turn onto a gravel road, and then a dirt road,
and then a clay road, and then--well, "road" is kind of overstating
it. If you look really hard, you could see where the pine needles have
been depressed ("Don't drive into that tree!").

We find ourselves at Vera's patch of land out in the country, with
patches of snow on the ground (we're not sure what mountain range it
is, but it wasn't the Rocky Mountains--we never have found those dang
things). And about 80 various and assorted relatives wandering around,
politely introducing themselves to us.

There's the family with eight kids that had driven up from Arizona,
another family of five kids from someplace else, Marge and Uncle
Alfred (who had a very cool ZZ Top kind of beard), and various male
cousins--every one of whom had a different type of hat, ranging from a
beret to a mountain man hat (this guy made homemade mushroom soup that
was really good, and apparently made from safe mushrooms since we're
here writing about it).

Eventually, everybody shows up and a location is decided for the
service (out in the front yard in the sunshine) and the boys quit
riding around the ATV and Laura gets her autoharp out, and Robert
summons up his best distinguished look (this, by the way, is one of
the few times that having lots of gray hair is handy) and we start the
memorial service.

At first a lot of folks hang back around the edges, not sure if they
want to get too close to this "religion" thing but as the service
progresses, they get closer and the kids quit fidgeting as much
(although the dogs and geese never did settle down, and the roosters
crow throughout) and by the end of the service, it is practically a
congregation.

One of the things about standing up and reading the service, Robert
finds out, is that you actually pay attention to what's being said.
There's one part near the end that stood out for us this time. It
goes:

"Make us deeply aware of the shortness and uncertainty of human life,
that when we shall have served you in our generation, we may be
gathered to our ancestors, having the testimony of a good
conscience...and in perfect charity with the world."

We're getting better at the serving part, our conscience is getting
clearer, and we're slowly working on being in perfect charity with the
world. Some days we do better than others.

And the service includes our favorite part:

For so did you ordain when you created me, saying
"You are dust and to dust you shall return."
All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we
make our song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia

Of course, if we'd known how many "Alleluia's" we'd be saying before
the day was over, we might have cut back a bit at this point...

AN ORTHODOX EASTER VIGIL
After the service, we grab some lunch, Robert chats with the kids
about literature (Dr. Seuss remains popular with certain segments of
the population, particularly "Hop on Pop"), and then we climb into our
cherry red PT Cruiser to navigate our way to asphalt roads and back to
Salem.

Because--tonight is the Easter Vigil! This is the service where we
celebrate the end of Lent (whew!) and the beginning of Easter (yay!).

St Paul doesn't set much store by the Great Vigil, as we learned to
our disappointment last year. Apparently, they didn't usually do this
liturgy, but three years ago they decided to hand it to the youth.

Last year was the second time the youth of the parish had done the
Great Vigil and they either didn't seek the advice of a good
liturgist, or they ignored what advice they received.

We were later told that St Timothy's does it right, and it's been on
Laura's calendar for months. And, boy howdy, was it different!

Essentially, it is more like an Eastern Orthodox service than anything
we've seen in an Episcopal Church. (In fact, it is more Orthodox than
the Vatican, judging from the newspaper report on the Pope's liberal,
modernized service.)

There is incense. Hoo boy, is there incense. At one point, there is so
much incense in the air, you can't see the other side of the
sanctuary, and it is only 100 feet across. Fortunately, we sit in the
back row, so we don't get hit too hard, but some of the folks in the
front rows are trying very hard not to hack their lungs out.

The first hour or so of the service, we sit around in the dark
listening to bible readings. The upside is that the sermon was also
given by candlelight, which made dozing through it a ton easier.

Then we get to the baptism (at this point, we are all allowed to
relight our candles), which starts with a litany of the saints (we ask
each and every one of the 8,000 saints in the church to pray for us,
one at a time).

The baptism itself is full immersion (most churches just splash a
little water on your head), which leads to an interesting ramification
we hadn't thought about: if you do full immersion baptism, you have to
find something to do while the newly baptized dry off and change
clothes. So we all stand around and sing some good old-fashioned
(pre-15th century) hymns.

Anyway, the service goes on for three hours and twenty minutes (the
longest service we've ever been to, including the ordination of a
bishop) and by our count, we said "Alleluia" about 280 times.
Including at the door as we leave, when the priest hands us an egg and
says "Alleluia, Christ is Risen!" (Robert, of course, wants a specific
egg--"The one that's different from all the other eggs and doesn't fit
in"--which he gets, because people are always caught off-guard when he
does that, even priests).

Then we all troop off to the Fellowship Hall where a great agape feast
is gathered in Tupperware by the congregation. There is lamb and roast
beef and chicken and macaroni salad and rice casseroles and one of
every kind of salad there is and beans and bread and corn bread and
roasted red pepper spread and ham. And THEN there is the dessert
table! Yikes!

Of course, we don't know anybody here (well, except for Elaine, who
was the labyrinth lady Robert interviewed and Marj, one of the ladies
in Laura's group reunion) so we sit next to some strangers. And we
quickly discover that the lady we're sitting next to grew up in North
Seattle and went to all the same schools Laura did.

In fact, she is the daughter of the Vice Principal at the high school
Laura went to. The very vice principal who suspended Laura from school
because she refused to go to a pep assembly. Or as Laura put it, "your
Dad was the asshole who suspended me!" The daughter agrees about her
Dad (fortunately), and they quickly become fast friends.

And, this being Salem, it turns out that she's also the daughter-in-
law of the woman who handles meals for the homeless families when they
stay at St. Paul's.

No kidding. Salem is the kind of town, where if you offend somebody,
you have to apologize to five people for it.

=======
That's it for this week. We expect to have a more orthodox week this
next week, but not so much Orthodox.

Robert & Laura
Mid-Life Crisis Trip