Notes from the English Department: Easter in Fall

I'm writing as the sun is beginning to get low. A slow afternoon of not much going on. For lunch, we had salmon bought right from the fishmonger. One of them once told Bill he could come to her kitchen and cook anytime. I shared a bottle of wine with Bill. We rarely drink a whole bottle, but today is Easter and the afternoon slow. This morning I went to St. Peter's, the Anglican church in Vina Del Mar, which is very English. I learned that the Gospel According to Mark was written like a best seller, with an ending that leads you hanging and wanting to know more. I like trivia like that. But as lovely as the people are there, I miss St. John's, my church at home in Lake County, California, the place where most of the parishoners support Gay marriage and where Shared Ministry has been practiced because we can't afford a full time priest. That means we get to make a budget and plan the songs (not me because I can' t sing, but I did write the newsletter) and grumble a bit. I miss the grumbling. Before we sit down, most of us do a kind of little bow or curtsy to the alter that they don't do here, and we use the old form of the Lord's Prayer more often, which I prefer. We've kept more to the old forms in general. It's like how Americans still say gotten, but the English don't.

I'm reserved and my personality predisposes me to be one of the Frozen Chosen. There was guitar music during Holy Communion today and it annoyed me. I prefer the old hymns. I feel my English major coming to roost in them. I used to feel my bones were buried in an English churchyard in a past life. Weird. It passed, but the thought stayed with me for a long time as I got to know Episcopalians. I'm a latent one. Not from the cradle, as they say.

In my doubts, which I have many, i found the first church I ever was comfortable at St. John's. Redwood gothic. It creaks like a ship. Motorcycles sometimes go up the street during hymns. We've had bikers come to church. If I'm really in a rush or haven't gotten the ironing done, Iwear jeans.

This Easter, as usual, my doubts seem larger than any belief. I feel Christian because I like Jesus. Not sure I love him; he seems a bit stern at times, but he'd be one of the people from history I'd have over for dinner if I could. I know that with my disposition, had I been born Jewish or Muslim or Hindu, I'd be in just about at the same place . . . probably attending a synagogue or mosque or temple with the same half-faith that I have lived with all of my life. As a child, my parents didn't go to church but would send me to whatever Southern Baptist church that was close by where I'd ask Jesus into my heart countless times, and not feeling he ever got there, kept on asking. I guess I still am in a way.

Mrs. Haines, my Sunday school teacher when I was eight, got mad at me because I went up to an alter call after having gotten down on my knees in her class a few weeks before and asked for salvation. You only do it once, according to her. She told us that the size of our houses in Heaven would be built according to how many souls we saved. Mrs. Haines warped me, and I got in trouble at home because people from the church came to tell my parents the good news, which they would have been just as happy not to have heard.

Bill and I are were in Valparaiso yesterday buying some extra macrame necklaces for our friend Charlene who is back in Canada. While we were talking to the vendors, beautiful young women in sight and soul who happen to be Communists, a couple of ragamuffins came and pulled on Bill's shirt. They wanted a donation for the Judas they had made. Today, many Judases, along with political figures, will be burned in the cerros on Valparaiso. One of the lovely Communistas said that Bush has been burned many times. That's an Easter, if you ask me. A little fire. A little effigy burning . . .now, that sounds like a party.

Last year as I went to St. Peters, a group of about two hundred Pentacostals passed me by, singing joyously, throwing confetti and handing out candy in celebration of the Lord's resurrection. I missed them this year; they must have taken another route. Even though I have my prejudices about conservative Christians, I kind of wanted to follow them because of the music and their energy. I'm not into contemporary Christian hymns. Most of them sound like they are being emitted from a bad FM station. Really bad rock and roll from the 80s, and the like. But I do like gospel music, and though this wasn't it, it had a great beat. They were joyous, an emotion that I have to admit I feel I haven't had my fair share of.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than I wish that I could look at life with eyes more open, find fewer barriers in my soul, unloosen a bit. I'm one of the shy people Garrison Keillor speaks of, even if I'm not a Lutheren. I'd love to be a Buddhist, actually. I sometime admire atheists. The dead Jesus thing gets to me. I learned a few years ago that the earliest Christians, those Communistas, would have never thought of putting up a crucifix. It was too real for them, too brutal. It was only after the memory of real crucifictions faded that they started to appear.

Truth be told, I might be a better Christian Scientist or a determined follower of A Course in Miracles, as they make more sense to me. Only the sensory elements don't. Or with the history I've had. I have too many fixed signs in my chart. Maybe that's why a half bottle of wine on an Easter afternoon beats Easter Eggs.

I want to burn effigies and handle snakes and find my mind overstepped by emotion. Forget about creeds. A problem for a Protestant, at least this one, who since Mrs. Haines and before (Dr. Bob at Central Baptist could probably have hosted Fox News) has worried about what to believe. I'm shy to admit this, like how uncool can I be?

Chile isn't necessary a Catholic country anymore . . .( my other influence as all of my parent's friends, retired cops from Detroit, were Catholic. We didn't eat meat on Fridays because we always had one or another of them over. I can still say the prayer from heart where you ask for blessing all the faithful departed may they rest in peace amen after asking for blessings for the bounty we were about to receive). The government made October 31st a holiday last year, the anti-Halloween. There are enough Evangelical voters now to be catered to. Lots of Mormons here. Seventh Day Adventist, too, who are mainstream other than that they eat healthier than the rest of us and have the Sabbath on the right day.

Notes from the English Department

Rosa y Luna, photo credit:Sandra Edwards

Last night we decided to take the coastal route on the bus ride home from Vina del Mar. We got off far enough from the steps that lead up to our house for a chance to walk along the breakwater. The tide was high and waves splashed over the rocks, their last wisps directly below us. The moon lit the clouds, mottled like doeskin, and the rocks held the sheen of water and foam.

We found a path to a rickety staircase. My husband went down and sat on a lower rung that was right above the tongues of the waves. Susana spoke of how she swam naked with a friend a year ago in the sea, how cold the water was, and how much she wanted to do it again. When Bill climbed up to us, Susana said, "My turn," and glided down the steps, stepping on to the top of the rocks. Waves broke over her feet as she balanced above the water. I have lousy balance; I envied her ability to stand there, poised and laughing, as the waves surrounded her. She came back happy with wet shoes and pant legs. My emotions have been ebbing low. What a gift to watch the sea in the moonlight and to hear laughter in the midst of it.

Today has been the first day I've wanted to write fiction again, after nine months (!) of time off. I've worried that blogging might take the place of making stories and novels. It's so immediate. Satisfying. And after a tap of a key, people can read it! Is the purpose of writing to be read? Or does writing itself, most of which stays in private nooks of computers and journals, the gift? These questions are too facile, but writing is lonely, and if you do it truthfully, hard work. With Internet and blogs, we are in a new world. What would the Bronte sisters do if they had blogs? Walk upon the moors, in the heather, and then come home to blog? Would novels be written?

I'm grateful that I have had the opportunity to be modestly published. I'm grateful for friends and relations who have read manuscripts during times I was still learning to believe in myself as a writer. Yesterday I was contacted by one of my most brilliant students, a young woman named Michelle Berger who was writing novels as a fifth grader. She told me she'd read Heron's Path, and it was the type of novel that she loves. A reader. Great joy. And yet, even without that reader, a writer writes.

The ocean is not far from my door. When it's especially quiet at night, we can hear it as we fall asleep. I open my window in my bedroom when I iron and watch small sailboats, seagulls and, on hot days, the usually smooth surface transformed into whitecaps as far as the horizon. I want to put life in words. I need to put my life in words, even if they're about a girl with six tentacles or two sisters who are not sisters, one of whom turns into a bird to take her real family home. Or to write a blog like I am tonight.

I don't know how this time in a foreign country will transform into fiction, but I begin to believe it will. We return in three months to California, and our life in Chile will be a dream: a cloudy night sky over the sea, saying the words for clouds and fog in Spanish, and watching a friend standing in the foam as waves rush past her feet. I will have these words to make it real.