Easter and abrupt endings

On our way back home from Easter at Grammy’s we stop in the small dry town of Merritt to fill our tank with gas. Across the boulevard is a teenaged boy up on the top of a dirty snowbank of a bluff, the highway bound traffic buzzing underneath him. He is wearing an old blue lumberjacket and baggy jeans. In front of him is a huge 80s style boom box. He is dancing to music we can’t hear over the rush of trucks and cars. All by himself. He is rocking out. He is foot loose. He is jumping around like David in his ephod. He is raving solo. Our teenagers in the car are aghast. What is this guy their age DOING?! They roll down the window. The boy is not an accomplished dancer, he has no training that one can see, but he is absolutely committed. The teens chuckle, not unkindly just – with a sense of “WHAT?!” I say, “I think he’s rather – awesome. I – I think – yes – I think I love this very much.” The teens nod. There is something audacious about it that has to be admired. We watch in wonder. We get our Starbucks and use the facilities and coordinate our snacks and fill up the tank and – he’s still up there, dancing as hard as ever.

“Wow”. And we drive away.

Two weeks ago our rooster died, last week I had to put my dog down and while we were away this week for Easter holiday with the kids, a mink squirmed her way into the chicken coop and ripped the throats out of all our hens. All twelve of our ladies, dead. My dear friend Craig was house sitting and brought his daughter along. He asked her to go get eggs the morning they arrived. She came back up to the house aghast, “Dad, the chickens are all dead.”

“No, they aren’t. Just nudge them, they’ll move off the eggs.”

“No, Dad…they’re DEAD!”

Sure enough. Craig was kind enough to bag them up for us and Louise at the recycling depot arranged for “her boys” to pick the birds up for a modest fee and bury them in the road kill lot with the permission of the municipality.

Some animals seem to kill for sport. Weasle. Mink. Humans. I talk about setting up mink traps. My step father is surprised. He thinks because I’m a bit of a lefty that I am opposed to hunting and trapping.

“Are you kidding me? I’d trap a mink and I’d shoot it between the eyes myself without mercy. That mink killed my Little Grey.”

(I don’t think he was convinced.)

Easter Sunday – and Scott has to work but Nora and I are around to finally go to church. I’ve been working or away for every single Sunday since mid December so I am thrilled to finally worship at St Andrews Wesley united.  We drive into the parking lot and it’s half empty. What?! Really?! On Easter Sunday?! My mind reels. Gary is right. The Christian church is dying. But I didn’t think it was so bad that Easter Sunday the church parking lot would be empty! My heart sinks.

My daughter has been doing this project at school: it’s a study of religions around the world. Each student picks two religions and shares their commonality and their differences. I think this is excellent. I love it that Ms Wallace has done this in class. No matter who believes what. It’s important to have a basic understanding of various political and religious ideologies. My daughter says most of the kids in her class have told her they are atheists, which is fine of course, but earlier in the year some class mates had been making fun of my daughter for her Christian beliefs. I suspect she is generally very quiet about her spirituality and still very much in the process of forming her ideas, but whatever went down, she felt misunderstood and ridiculed. When I wrote to Ms Wallace about this, she said she would not address it directly, but she would address discrimination generally, later, while the class studied religion. My daughter wasn’t the only one getting heat for being a person of faith. Her good friend is Muslim and she was getting it too.

Another couple of very close friends of hers are First Nations and she has asked me a lot of important questions about residential schools and colonialism and Christianity’s part in this. We’ve had some great discussions about how immense evil is done in the name of religion or politics, even though it is often in direct opposition to the original ideology.

Mink are everywhere.

I felt her project gave her a chance to talk about the basic tenets of Christianity: forgiveness, compassion, inclusion, service to others, living a life of love and the quest for peace. She found a great picture of Jesus as a hippy for her poster and two women being married by a United Church minister. She also included a shot of Pope Francis giving a goofy thumbs up sign. I don’t think she’s decided whether she’s a Christian or not, and that’s okay with me. She will find her way and her way will be her own. I think it’s important not to push my beliefs on anyone, not even my kid, mostly because it just doesn’t work.

We discuss some of this while I find parking. This is easy to do. The lot is nearly vacant. Why? This is such an excellent church. It’s inclusive and affirming, it runs one of the largest DTES shelters, it has beautiful music and intelligent speakers and a great congregation of lovely people…maybe it’s just the labels. Maybe the name “Christian” only inspires extreme right wing politics, racism, homophobia and sexism in the minds of society now. Maybe Jesus truly has become a dirty word. Maybe it just can’t be heard anymore. Maybe too much damage has been done and we can’t even reclaim it. Maybe we have to start over. New words. New understandings. New ways of congregating.

I push the “up” on the elevator and check my watch. Where IS everyone? On holiday?! Are they having the service elsewhere and I didn’t get the memo?! My wrist says it’s 10:30am! Oh. Wait. It’s still on Alberta time! That’s why the parking lot is empty! Maybe the church isn’t dying as fast as I think! I laugh and put my arm around Nora. “Well, I’m thrilled. We get a great parking spot and time for breakfast!”

When we head back to church after our breakfast sandwiches, the parking lot says “full” and indeed it’s packed and some members are wearing most excellent easter hats. The music is so sublime it makes me gasp and tear up. Dan Chambers does the sermon today. He tells us about the original ending of the gospel of Mark. I didn’t notice this before. There are two alternate endings invented by monks because all the original gospels of Mark end abruptly with chapter 12, verse 8: ”

⁸ Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”“

I love the original ending. I agree with Dan. Its starkness is so true. These women witnessed the brutality of their Christ being crucified. Some in the crowd called out to Pilate, “crucify him, crucify him” for political and religious reasons, and some spectators, for sport. Then, when the women came to embalm the body and roll away the tomb stone to do so, Christ’s body was missing. Instead, they were visited by a young man in a white robe who told the women that Jesus of Nazareth had risen and gone ahead of them to Galilea. Um yeah, this would be alarming and upsetting. That’s all Mark writes.

Mystery is not digested easily.

After church, I drop my daughter off at her Dad’s. On my way to Bowen I think about that boy dancing in Merritt. Why was he dancing? Is he mentally disturbed? Is he simply joyous and confident and doesn’t give a shit? Was he told that he was a pretty good dancer and if he got out on the streets to busk he might get money for it? Was he high? Was he trying to find some way to express his pent up anger or despair? Was he trying to not kill himself? Was he celebrating the Risen Lord? Does he have a huge case of spring fever? Was it a dare? Is some little jerk going to post a video of him and circulate it around the school so when he comes back from Easter break everyone will be making fun of him? Did he not see this coming?

When I get to our house I see Craig has left it very clean and he did a good job of the suite too. I peer down at the chicken coop. It’s eerily still and sadly silent. I can’t bear to go down there myself, though I am curious to see if I can find the place where the mink got in. I decide to wait for Scott. Once in the house I half expect my dog to be sleeping by the fire. Oh right. No. Nothing. But the bunnies are still alive. Thank God. I was worried for them. Mink kill large quantities of animals and then the theory is, they come back later to feast on the dead. Well, we rounded up our dead chickens which makes me worry the mink will travel up the hill and discover Beanie and Bartholomew sitting all fluffy and lunch-like in their hutch.

I start writing a very dark play. For some reason, I am compelled to address evil. I already know the title. It starts with M.

I know some would say that the mink was just doing what it needed to do to survive. I don’t agree. Nature can be unreasonably cruel and being a part of nature, so can humanity.

Scott gets home. Before dinner we solemnly walk down to the chicken coop hand in hand to investigate. The first thing Scott does is open up the egg box where the chickens roost and out roll two severed heads: Beulah and Persephone I believe.

I say, “oh, I guess Craig missed those…”

Scott looks down by the coop door and plain as day sees where some of the wire has been pulled away, enough for a mink to get through.

I say, “I don’t think I can…look anymore…”

I start my way up the hill and then put my head in my hands and cry. Loud. I just cry and cry like a little child in the middle of my soggy back yard with chicken heads on the ground. I’m sure the sound of my sobs bounce right off the waves of the sea and carry for miles around me. I don’t care. Delicate and oblivious confetti flowers pop from the plum tree and stretch over my head: wedding boughs. My Fellow strides up towards me and holds me tight.

“I’m sorry Bella. It’s my fault. I should have reinforced the coop along the ground. I was going to and then – I didn’t.”

We hang on to each other for a while and whisper loving things in the garden where he first proposed to me, in the garden we planted together, in the garden where things have lived and died and will live again.

“I”ll fix it up tight and we’ll get more hens.”

“okay.”

While he cleans out the coop I prepare risotto and pop the cork on a chianti that an Italian guest of ours left as a gift. I have a wee glass before he gets in the house. My head swirls with images: the Merritt boy dancing, Jesus striding into Jerusalem on a waddling donkey instead of a revolutionary white stallion, my daughter challenging me earnestly in Starbucks with her bunny earrings…my great big man striding around the silent coop picking up bits and pieces of his “ladies”. My primulas making a comeback after the last big dump of snow.

What is this I am feeling? I believe it’s a sober love of spring.