Newsflash
Have just seen that my article is up on the Melbourne’s Child website. If you want to read about hi-jinks in church and how to have your feet washed for free, click here. They've called it Of Maundy Thursday, Mirth and Majesty.
Postscript
Melbourne's Child has taken the article off the web now because it was a seasonal piece. So here it is if you'd like to read it!
‘I’m not washing someone’s smelly feet,’ my daughter exclaims, disgust splashed all over her thirteen-year-old face.
‘And no one’s washing my feet,’ adds my son, tightening his shoelaces in the back seat, ‘what if I have to laugh?’ I keep silent.
The thought of washing some stranger’s feet doesn’t appeal to me either. I practically pass out when my son takes his runners off in another room. Conjuring up images of bunions, in-grown toenails, warts and goodness knows what other foul foot conditions I might come across starts to make me feel queasy.
It’s Easter, and I’m on holiday with a girlfriend and my two teenagers, driving through a small rural community by the coast. We’re on our way to meet friends who’ve invited us to the local Anglican church for a traditional ‘Maundy Thursday’ evening service. This is an annual event in the church calendar, and we’ve been told it will incorporate symbolic foot washing and the ‘stripping of the church’, where ornaments, symbols and icons will be removed from the building at the conclusion of the service, when the lights will be extinguished and the congregation leave in silence. This generates much discussion in our car on the way. My children have never attended a service like this before, and with questions such as, “How will everyone be able to find their shoes in the dark?” and “What if someone has an artificial foot?” – I’m starting to have second thoughts about the whole thing.
The church is small, set in a neat cottage garden. It overlooks a sea of rolling hills, and on the cusp of nightfall, you can hear the distant roar of the ocean. A friendly woman in a pink cardigan greets us in the cosy entrance foyer, which opens into a high-ceilinged room with exposed rafters and stained-glass windows. The hard wooden pews are arranged in rows in front of the altar, which seems too big for the floor space of the building.
The pews are half-filled when we arrive. I do a quick calculation and figure we’ve just brought the average age of the congregation down by about 20 years. We sit with our friends, taking up an entire row.
The vicar, a generously proportioned woman in her forties, looks scholarly in her cassock, and wastes no time in getting on with the business of the service. We sing hymns and read responsively from a printed sheet. I have mixed feelings when my friend begins to pull faces and do a slow motion version of the rumba to match the dirge-pace of the organ accompaniment. I look over to see who’s playing, hoping they haven’t noticed the theatrics in our row. I decide that if my fingers can go that fast when I look 100, I’ll be happy. I want both to laugh and give my friend a serious dig in the ribs, for being so irreverent.
The juxtaposition of humour and reverence suddenly slaps me in the face; how often, I muse, do we regard laughter and the sacred as arch enemies when really they can be best friends. I hope that my children, on either side of me, are picking up the vibes from my epiphany. I want this night to be meaningful for them.
The foot washing, as it turns out, is performed by the vicar herself, who kneels at the front of the church and tends the feet of at least twenty people, my son’s and daughter’s included. She directs our feet in turn to a bowl of warm water, and enlisting the help of a bar of ‘Dove’ soap, gently washes and dries each one.
The floor boards are smooth and cool under my feet as I pad back to my pew. I re-run my foot washing experience as I watch the vicar’s hands work the soap into several more feet. I try to hold on to the sensation of warm water lapping around my toes, the soap sliding under the arch of my foot, the softness of the towel. I try to hold on to the intimacy and humility of those few moments. I frown – then smile – when my efforts to contemplate the significance of this aged ritual for myself are thwarted by two elderly women behind me, who start up a lively conversation about their infirm friend, Elsie. Their whispered confidences, I suspect, can be heard by most of the church.
The foot washing is followed by Communion, where we stand in a semi-circle in front of the altar. My son, who is always asking to sample my drink if we are at a party, takes a huge swig of wine, casting me a triumphant glance. My daughter, content with her wafer, waves the chalice past as if it were poison.
When we return to our seats, my daughter erupts into a fit of giggles. It’s obviously her way of dealing with the whole experience, and understandable, considering our earlier conversation in the car. Nevertheless, I cast her a look that would freeze the bells off a herd of Siberian goats.
Then, like retribution from the gods, an attack of the sillies catches me unawares and completely demolishes my composure.
As we wait for the vicar to conclude the Communion, I glance at my son. He is sitting open mouthed, staring ahead in disbelief at the vicar, who has turned her entire attention to consuming the remaining wafers as fast as she can, and is now guzzling the rest of the wine. This ritual scoffing of the left-overs makes perfect sense to a good Anglican or Catholic, but not to an outsider like my son, who, I suspect, is regarding it as pure bad manners.
The realization of what he is seeing through his unaccustomed eyes is so funny, I cannot contain my mirth. It begins to escape in small bodily movements that I try unsuccessfully to conceal by putting my hand over my face and looking down. It doesn’t help when my friend bends down to retrieve something from her handbag and bumps her head on the way up. When I realise she’s concluded I’m upset about something, and hands me a tissue, the laughter escapes in an explosive, extremely audible snort, followed by a severe fit of giggles which soon radiates out from either side of me along the row. I chide myself for being so judgmental earlier on.
The stripping of the church proceeds with regimented orderliness as anything not nailed down is removed to a back room – Bible, flowers, lectern, wall hangings, cross. The mood, as somber as the building after the candles are snuffed, is lightened for our row by the women behind, who keep up a running commentary of the proceedings, predicting what should be taken out next. They express utter horror when the hymn numbers are forgotten, remaining forlornly on the wall as people leave.
I will remember this Maundy Thursday service for a long time. I will remember the vicar washing lots of feet, and how uncomfortable she must have been, kneeling on the hard floor for all that time. I will remember the sense of reverence and humour that imbues ordinary people’s experience of community. And I will remember how the world changes when viewed through someone else’s eyes.
On the way back to our accommodation, we recount our various impressions of our first Maundy Thursday service, and when our laughter subsides, we eventually fall to silence. I think again of the mysterious connection between mirth and majesty.
As we weave through moonlit hills and shadowy forest, I think of my children sitting in the back seat. I wonder what memories they will take away with them. Mum getting the giggles? The place to go for a legal, underage slurp?
And I wonder what it has been like for them to have a stranger wash their feet.
Postscript
Melbourne's Child has taken the article off the web now because it was a seasonal piece. So here it is if you'd like to read it!
‘I’m not washing someone’s smelly feet,’ my daughter exclaims, disgust splashed all over her thirteen-year-old face.
‘And no one’s washing my feet,’ adds my son, tightening his shoelaces in the back seat, ‘what if I have to laugh?’ I keep silent.
The thought of washing some stranger’s feet doesn’t appeal to me either. I practically pass out when my son takes his runners off in another room. Conjuring up images of bunions, in-grown toenails, warts and goodness knows what other foul foot conditions I might come across starts to make me feel queasy.
It’s Easter, and I’m on holiday with a girlfriend and my two teenagers, driving through a small rural community by the coast. We’re on our way to meet friends who’ve invited us to the local Anglican church for a traditional ‘Maundy Thursday’ evening service. This is an annual event in the church calendar, and we’ve been told it will incorporate symbolic foot washing and the ‘stripping of the church’, where ornaments, symbols and icons will be removed from the building at the conclusion of the service, when the lights will be extinguished and the congregation leave in silence. This generates much discussion in our car on the way. My children have never attended a service like this before, and with questions such as, “How will everyone be able to find their shoes in the dark?” and “What if someone has an artificial foot?” – I’m starting to have second thoughts about the whole thing.
The church is small, set in a neat cottage garden. It overlooks a sea of rolling hills, and on the cusp of nightfall, you can hear the distant roar of the ocean. A friendly woman in a pink cardigan greets us in the cosy entrance foyer, which opens into a high-ceilinged room with exposed rafters and stained-glass windows. The hard wooden pews are arranged in rows in front of the altar, which seems too big for the floor space of the building.
The pews are half-filled when we arrive. I do a quick calculation and figure we’ve just brought the average age of the congregation down by about 20 years. We sit with our friends, taking up an entire row.
The vicar, a generously proportioned woman in her forties, looks scholarly in her cassock, and wastes no time in getting on with the business of the service. We sing hymns and read responsively from a printed sheet. I have mixed feelings when my friend begins to pull faces and do a slow motion version of the rumba to match the dirge-pace of the organ accompaniment. I look over to see who’s playing, hoping they haven’t noticed the theatrics in our row. I decide that if my fingers can go that fast when I look 100, I’ll be happy. I want both to laugh and give my friend a serious dig in the ribs, for being so irreverent.
The juxtaposition of humour and reverence suddenly slaps me in the face; how often, I muse, do we regard laughter and the sacred as arch enemies when really they can be best friends. I hope that my children, on either side of me, are picking up the vibes from my epiphany. I want this night to be meaningful for them.
The foot washing, as it turns out, is performed by the vicar herself, who kneels at the front of the church and tends the feet of at least twenty people, my son’s and daughter’s included. She directs our feet in turn to a bowl of warm water, and enlisting the help of a bar of ‘Dove’ soap, gently washes and dries each one.
The floor boards are smooth and cool under my feet as I pad back to my pew. I re-run my foot washing experience as I watch the vicar’s hands work the soap into several more feet. I try to hold on to the sensation of warm water lapping around my toes, the soap sliding under the arch of my foot, the softness of the towel. I try to hold on to the intimacy and humility of those few moments. I frown – then smile – when my efforts to contemplate the significance of this aged ritual for myself are thwarted by two elderly women behind me, who start up a lively conversation about their infirm friend, Elsie. Their whispered confidences, I suspect, can be heard by most of the church.
The foot washing is followed by Communion, where we stand in a semi-circle in front of the altar. My son, who is always asking to sample my drink if we are at a party, takes a huge swig of wine, casting me a triumphant glance. My daughter, content with her wafer, waves the chalice past as if it were poison.
When we return to our seats, my daughter erupts into a fit of giggles. It’s obviously her way of dealing with the whole experience, and understandable, considering our earlier conversation in the car. Nevertheless, I cast her a look that would freeze the bells off a herd of Siberian goats.
Then, like retribution from the gods, an attack of the sillies catches me unawares and completely demolishes my composure.
As we wait for the vicar to conclude the Communion, I glance at my son. He is sitting open mouthed, staring ahead in disbelief at the vicar, who has turned her entire attention to consuming the remaining wafers as fast as she can, and is now guzzling the rest of the wine. This ritual scoffing of the left-overs makes perfect sense to a good Anglican or Catholic, but not to an outsider like my son, who, I suspect, is regarding it as pure bad manners.
The realization of what he is seeing through his unaccustomed eyes is so funny, I cannot contain my mirth. It begins to escape in small bodily movements that I try unsuccessfully to conceal by putting my hand over my face and looking down. It doesn’t help when my friend bends down to retrieve something from her handbag and bumps her head on the way up. When I realise she’s concluded I’m upset about something, and hands me a tissue, the laughter escapes in an explosive, extremely audible snort, followed by a severe fit of giggles which soon radiates out from either side of me along the row. I chide myself for being so judgmental earlier on.
The stripping of the church proceeds with regimented orderliness as anything not nailed down is removed to a back room – Bible, flowers, lectern, wall hangings, cross. The mood, as somber as the building after the candles are snuffed, is lightened for our row by the women behind, who keep up a running commentary of the proceedings, predicting what should be taken out next. They express utter horror when the hymn numbers are forgotten, remaining forlornly on the wall as people leave.
I will remember this Maundy Thursday service for a long time. I will remember the vicar washing lots of feet, and how uncomfortable she must have been, kneeling on the hard floor for all that time. I will remember the sense of reverence and humour that imbues ordinary people’s experience of community. And I will remember how the world changes when viewed through someone else’s eyes.
On the way back to our accommodation, we recount our various impressions of our first Maundy Thursday service, and when our laughter subsides, we eventually fall to silence. I think again of the mysterious connection between mirth and majesty.
As we weave through moonlit hills and shadowy forest, I think of my children sitting in the back seat. I wonder what memories they will take away with them. Mum getting the giggles? The place to go for a legal, underage slurp?
And I wonder what it has been like for them to have a stranger wash their feet.
Comments
I really enjoyed the final final final - and now published! - story of maudy and mayhem. Well done, you!
It's fun, all this blogging... but oh so time devouring! Oh well, for some of us pleasure is in the small things, like this: writing and communicating and sharing and laughing. That kind of stuff.
Thanks for getting me into Blog World.
...Now how the hell do I add pictures to my stories? You realize you are my Blog Guru, don't you? :)
love f, the fellow blogger
I really enjoyed that story and your beaut writing - very evocative!
It reminded me of the time my sister and I were small and we had to go to the local Catholic church because a visiting mission priest was doing the mass. (They were usually Irish, with very loud voices and pointing fingers ... towards the heavens and towards the sinners ...and I imagined, me.) Then, in the middle of his ranting, a large moth landed on his bald head. Meryl and I gasped and then fell about in a fit of giggles. We were very smartly separated and chastised. I've never been able to look at a bald priest again without grinning to myself.
Take care
Sheryl G (from Brissie)
the entrance where your son says, "But what if I need to laugh" is so gorgeous and the ending in reflection, as a mother, watching somebody else bathe your childrens feet. There is a poignancy to it.
Congrad's on getting it in Melbourne's Child.
-amber
Great work on the Melbourne Child! Well done. Yes, by all means email me your 5000words by Monday, then I'll be able to foward them to victoria. That should work! Catherine.
ps. If you're in touch with any of the others, can you pass this on?? You probably aren't...but just in case. thanks, catherine-in-queensland