Dr. Emily FriedmanEaster Vigil starts in darkness, silence, warm presence of bodies in still-cool air. You hold a wax candle in hope, fidgeting the paper disc. Then an anticipated-but-still-sudden flame, a tiny light in the darkness, quickly spreads into dozens of points of light, as one person reaches to another.
It is still human, still slick with spilt wax the paper disc doesn’t corral.
But faces are beautiful in candlelight, warmed. For a moment, you can imagine Transfiguration, the glow of divine love, what persists when all else is dust.
Spread out across pews, for a moment the stars come to earth.
For a while all AL license plates read “when the stars fell on Alabama” — reminders of an 1833 meteor shower so bright folks thought it was the end of the world.
Tonight it is raining — only water.
Tonight I keep no Vigil.
But I find comfort thinking of even grey dawn, of Hell broken open to free those left there too goddamn long, of new laws, led first by a commandment to love one another.
I tell my students after they play to take with them what serves them, leave the rest behind.
Somehow this too is my theology.