Palm Sunday

Coffee without cream isn't coffee. It's a whole different drink. And while I know that there are folks who will disagree, it's the way I learned to drink it as a child, when I was seven years old. (My short term memories may be slipping, but my long term ones are still very much in tact.) I was sitting at the breakfast table with my mom. Packing boxes littered the kitchen because we had just moved into a teensy weensy apartment. My dad had recently skipped out to marry another woman, who just happened to have another daughter. We were two abandoned girls in a cheap crummy apartment.

My mother was pouring herself a cup off coffee, and I said, "I want some too."

Normally she would have said, "when you get older." But that morning she got down a cup and saucer for me and poured half a cup. She pushed the can of evaporated milk across the table. "Okay, try it, see if you like it." I added the milk and several spoons of sugar before getting it just right. "I like coffee." I said.

"Well, I guess you're old enough to drink it, then." she said. And that's the way I've drunk it ever since. I've switched from sugar to splenda, and from evaporated milk to raw milk or non-dairy creamer, but it's still the only way to drink coffee. In New England coffee with cream is called "regular". Southerners don't make that distinction, but it makes perfect sense to me.

So what does this remotely have to do with Palm Sunday? Just this: coffee without cream is not coffee, and Holy Week without the passion of the cross is not Holy Week. Here in Brewster we are focusing our lives... our worship, meditation, rising and going to bed, work schedules and food consumption... all around the sacredness of the Universe, in particular, our Mother Earth. Our species has lost its connection to this greater picture of God's love through creation, and we are making a deliberate effort here to live sustainably, creatively and carefully, giving thanks for the natural world and all that is in it. I wholeheartedly support that effort. Yet, when we were deliberating over the liturgical choices for our very first Holy Week at Melrose, I was uncomfortable. I wanted to be here and I didn't. I prayed. The most exquisite clarity came to me when I accepted that for me, the traditional observance of this coming week's events was the connection I needed to make with God.

I suffered a major meltdown on Palm Sunday several years ago during the Passion Gospel that the Episcopal Church insists on enacting. Ever since, this one Sunday has been a killer for me. As a protestant child I never experienced it as anything other than a triumphal march around the church grounds, singing hosannas and waving palm fronds. The Passion wasn't even mentioned where I went to church... or if it was, I never noticed. We went from palm fronds to Easter eggs. But as an adult Episcopalian I was introduced to this anachronistic element... from Hail the King! to crucify him! in less than ten minutes. What's with that?

Several explanations were forthcoming when I was finally brave enough to ask. One was practical: Most folks can't get off work for a three hour service on Good Friday so we give them a mini version on Palm Sunday. That didn't cut it for me. Another version made a little more sense in an existential sort of way: Life changes. Sometimes instantaneously. One minute you're flavor of the month, the next you're fired for no good reason. (I could relate to that.) Still, I've never been at peace with the way we do it. Give the man a break! Let him be triumphant for the whole day, not just for the time it takes to read the Gospel. But nobody's asking me.

Holy Week, as it has been observed in our community, follows through with what we know of the last days of Jesus' life. Each day goes deeper into the mystery and brings us closer to Good Friday. The traditions were designed for this purpose, and it can be an emotional and spiritual wringer if you surrender to it completely. I got closer last year than I've ever been, but I also had a ton of overwhelming sacristan duties that tapped my strength, tried my patience and interfered with my focus. I want to go for it this year. And a little voice is telling me I need to. Holy Week without the passion of the cross is coffee without cream. and I just can't drink coffee black.