Today's Lenten reflection is on the Eucharist and its connection to Passover. Last night I went to a Christian seder at a neighborhood Catholic church, and the connection between the Passover Seder and the Christian Mass couldn't have been clearer. In the seder, we commemorate the blood of a lamb saving the nation of Israel; in the Mass, we commemorate the blood of the Lamb saving the whole world. At the seder, the father of the family holds up the matzo and breaks it; at the Mass, the priest holds up the host (which is made of unleavened bread) and breaks it.
This is the second Christian seder I've been to, and both times I had an unfortunate fit of "the giggles," which has (thankfully!) never plagued me during the Mass. The first time we were reading from a book typed up by a woman whose fiance was in medical school. He dictated the word "period" wherever he wanted her to put one, but in one case she accidentally typed the word "period," which would not have been SO bad, except it was at the end of the line of a psalm that said: "And death is not the end." Period. Last night I had trouble keeping a straight face as we were dropping wine onto our plates for each plague, and as the "father" recited each one, we intoned it like a bunch of zombies after him. When we got to "frogs," I had to fight not to burst into laughter. Partly it's just the sound of the word (imagine a bunch of zombies droning "frogs") and partly it's the concept. I mean, no wonder Pharoah wouldn't let Moses's people go free! What the heck would a "plague of frogs" entail? "Gosh, Joseph, there sure are a lot of frogs around lately." AND....? Most of the other plagues sound awful, but FROGS? They don't bite, they don't eat crops, and they're frankly kind of cute.
The other moment when I almost burst into helpless laughter last night was when they told us about the dessert; they said, "This cake is thousands of years old. It symbolizes the bricks the Israeli slaves used to build in Egypt." Anna Banana II and I just exchanged a glance. If the cake was that old, it wasn't just a SYMBOL of a brick anymore! Of course what they meant was that the TYPE of cake was thousands of years old, but that's not what they said... I said to Anna Banana II, "I wonder if we could get a more recent piece of cake... like one baked within the last couple of days!" But I will say that the cake was delicious, a dense honey cake.
Friday night Cecil Markovitch declared it was "Lutherans' Night Out," but Kathbert wouldn't come with us to the fish fry, so it was "Lutheran's Night Out" since my OTHER choir director was the only Lutheran there. Cecil said his favorite Lutheran joke was: "What do you call Lutherans from Duluth? Dulutherans!" and I wondered what the jokes were like that didn't make the cut! Then we got in this crazy conversation about the Lutheran's nice nursing nurse niece. Rich Bonomo, Anna Banana II, A-Fooze, and the B-Boys were among the others at Lutheran's Night Out. (We have to miss Frog's Night Out - no joke - because it is inconveniently scheduled for Maundy Thursday.)
Saturday morning my acoustic band had a gig at a nature center to celebrate maple sugar. Afterwards we went to the little zoo they have there, of native animals, and on the way back some brain trust was walking backwards up the path, and as I swerved to avoid him, I tripped and twisted my right ankle (the one I've sprained twice) and then landed on my left knee (the one that was still bruised from skiing last weekend). And that is why I did not do any training for the triathlon this weekend!
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2 comments:
I dont know if this would help, but tradition says that you have to drink a glass of that sweet wine for every plague. So that makes it what 10 glasses for 10 plagues. Probably at the end there, you may not have the giggles as you would be passed out :-)
But I thought traditionally they used wine cups the size of thimbles so I probably would be VERY giggly after ten of those!
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