Good Friday Fragments

I am feeling fragmented today.  We start a new quarter at school on Monday; we have today off because it's Good Friday.  I've been coming home each day this week feeling really tired, and I'm not sure why.  So, let me collect some fragments here and see if I see a larger shape.

--If you were hoping for a more spiritual approach to Good Friday, see this post, which combines photos with brief meditation on a variety of approaches to Good Friday.

--Or maybe you'd enjoy this essay in The Washington Post by Michael Gerson.  It talks about the rise of people claiming to have no religion and what it might mean. He doesn't see catastrophe; in fact, he concludes this way:  "In religion, it is easy to measure what is dying; it is harder to locate the manger where something new is being born."

--Ah, that reference to Christmas.  I've had Christmas music in my head, which is strange for Holy Week.  Maybe it's because of our weather.


--We began this week with record breaking high temperatures on Palm Sunday, and then we descended into record breaking lows.  Very odd.

--I had thought I would wear all my winter clothes one last time this month, and that was true for my various tops, jackets, and sweaters.  But I've worn the same skirt, a straight black skirt made of stretchy, comfy velveteen for 3 days in a row.  I've assumed that I would be unlikely to see the same people each day, since we're between quarters, and anyway, I was wearing something completely different each day to go with the skirt.

--When I told my spouse, he said, "Well it is a good week to wear sackcloth."  Yes, black velvet sackcloth!

--Yesterday, I got home from work and was too tired to spend the time before Maundy Thursday service doing something productive, like reading or writing.  So I popped my copy of Godspell into the DVD player and was enchanted all over again.

--There's a scene filmed on the construction site that would become the World Trade Center.  Jesus lectures on loving our enemies on that twin tower site that would take on such a different symbolism later.

--Jonathan Padget wrote a great essay in 2006 for The Washington Post, where he revisits the movie and compares it to other movies that came out in :  "'Godspell' may be too dated, earnest, perky or cloying for some. It's worlds apart in tone from its theatrical and 1973 cinematic peer, 'Jesus Christ Superstar' -- Norman Jewison having opted to film Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's rock opera in the Israeli desert with tanks bearing down on Carl Anderson's Judas at one point. (Does this provide another pop cultural filter for viewing international events in 2006? Discuss.) And Jesus-as-Superman on the World Trade Center would soon be upstaged by another Superman, Christopher Reeve, oh-so-gracefully flying past the twin towers in 1978's 'Superman: The Movie'""


--Ah, the Jesus-soaked 70's!  Walter Kirn, in a 2004 "The Way We Live Now" essay in The New York Times, put it this way:  "I remember my own family's Great Awakening back in the Jesus-haunted 1970's, when President Carter was advertising his piety and 'Godspell' and 'Up With People' were packing concert halls."

--I told my spouse that when I'm old, with brains scrambled a bit, I'll probably remember my youth all wrong. I'll remember that time in my youth that I was in a Jesus commune and all the dancing that we did around New York City.

--Time to bring this writing to a close.  I have scones in the oven, since I'm home, and it's cool enough to bake.  I have a recipe for lemon scones that I'm tinkering with.  It feels both autumnal and like a chilly Spring morning, so I'm attempting a pumpkin scone with pecans ground into meal as a partial replacement for the flour.  Perhaps you'll see a recipe at some point!

--An in an hour, I must away to church--the second of many services as Holy Week comes crashing to a close.