13th August, 2017

St. Mark 

"I believe; help my unbelief!" Mark 9.24

Palm Sunday's reed cross holds pinned to my wall beside the watercolour aviary and the jar of cut flowers (peach roses and yellow carnations today, replacing last fortnight's coronet of sunflowers). "Carry your cross." These are the words with which one receives one's reeds. "Carry your cross, Sarah." I had been ill all winter; I had been away from church all winter; my baptism had fallen through; I was as the boy with the spirit that from childhood had "cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him," the boy whom the disciples could not heal, the boy who could only be restored through his father's cry, "I believe; help my unbelief!" Palm Sunday was my first day back at the church. I was handed my reed, and told "carry your cross." I took the cross home and pinned it beneath the moorhen, and I shall not take it down until I receive another next year. I shall carry my cross.

"Love only knoweth whence it came

and comprehendeth love."

J. G. Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier

The Gradual Hymn today was Whittier's "Immortal Love." We are rather tuneless at Holy Cross, on account of most of us being over ninety and partly deaf. I haven't that excuse. I think I really ought take singing lessons and see if my tunelessness can be repaired. If I could sing better, I could sing at a higher volume, and then the vicar wouldn't be left doing all the work. The vicar has a resplendent singing voice; there is no finer moment than when, during the second to last verse of the recessional hymn (and it is always the second to last verse), he proceeds down the aisle, his baritone causing even the candles in the corners to quake, and as he passes, for one sublime instant, every tongue in the church is transformed, and we become angelic choirs not tone-deaf nonagenarians.

One by one all of these tongues will fall silent, and then it shall just be me. I should learn to sing. Even if I am the last voice in an emptied edifice, even if it is only I and the dust motes, and the lonely spears of light that pierce the hands of stained glass saints, even if it is only this, I should learn to sing. I should learn to sing for all that was, in remembrance and reverence of all that was, for every soul that brought his yearnings to the pew, her aching to the altar, his penitence to the prayer cushion, her love to the altar. I should learn to sing for all who suffered, and all who rejoiced, and all who cried out, "I believe; help my unbelief."

The last congregant may pass, and there may be no other to replace him, and the churches may fall silent, and the stones fail, and the stained glass saints bleach to a blankness, and even the dust motes return to dust, but Love shall not perish. There is no end to Love. My singing shall not be a threnody. I believe. Help my unbelief.

Images: 

St. Mark: By Jean Bourdichon - Bibliothèque nationale de France, lien/link ici/here, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24527937

Whittier: By BPL - John Greenleaf Whittier, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9722792