We
had a great family weekend. On
Saturday evening we joined in celebrating the twelfth birthday of Granddaughter
Number Two, Lulu Fleming-Benite, at the Bareburger eatery near the NYU library. Thence we were whisked by Rich to his
house in Red Hook.
Church of the Visitation of the BVM, Brooklyn
The main event for Sunday was to be theatrical, but that would be after being taken out by Ruby (Granddaughter Number Four) for coffee and pastry. There were still morning hours left. There was an Episcopal church within walking distance (for a serious walker) in Carroll Gardens, but its service time was not until eleven. I thought that might be a little tight, since our theater tickets were for two o’clock in Dumbo. So I did what I sometimes do in such circumstances--sought out the nearest Christian congregation of whatever flavor I could find. A few blocks away was huge, old Visitation R. C.--of near cathedral proportions. It has a mass at ten, and thither I repaired. Oh, and—relevant fact—the ten o’clock Eucharist is conducted in Spanish.
There
were probably two hundred people in the congregation, though scattered through
the vast nave in a way that made it seem thin. There might have been six or eight adult males in addition
to me, but lots of children.
Things didn’t happen very fast.
What looked (and sounded) like a band of subway musicians tuned up
languidly in the south transept. Women, including one minimally
ecclesiastical nun, wandered about the sanctuary, and in and out of a door
beyond it. At some point a priest
in a chasuble, mic in hand, joined the peripatetics. Eventually the service began—rhythmic chants of
guitar-backed alleloo, with lots of clapping,
hand-raising, arm-lifting, and the simulation of doves on the wing.
Of
the words of the liturgy I got about eighty percent—way more (I reasoned) than
most Catholics in most places at most times would have—and virtually all the
sermon. The priest preached for over an hour. (The norm in my own church is now eleven minutes.) A certain amount of this was ceremonial
and dialogic. Every emphatic
homiletic point was followed by the priest’s alleloo, to which the congregation supplied the wanting ya. There were brief intermittent interrogations, as for
example,
(Preacher)
Where do you send a demon?
(Congregation)
Away! [with arm gesture of throwing
something away].
But the main line was very substantial and very clear. The gospel on which he preached (Mark,
chapter 1) includes an account of Jesus’s teaching in a synagogue, where he “taught
with authority” and exorcised a demon from a man possessed. Explaining that a synagogue is a Jewish
house of worship, like a church, he then asked whether it was possible that
evil could come into the Church.
Surprisingly loud shouts of ¡Claro
que sí! Yes, indeed, said the priest, and it has--which is why Pope
Francis is having to cast out the demonios
from the Vatican itself!
That
didn’t sound to me much like opium for the masses, which had to be supplied by
a charming ceremony for Candlemas (it was February 2nd) presumably
brought from Estremadura to Jalisco five hundred years ago—in which several
young women presented elaborate Jesus-dolls, some in baby-buggies, at the steps
of the altar. Most of these people
probably lived in the nearby public housing projects. Among them were four
mothers with real infants. I had small doubt that the unseen Christ was really there
too.
I
received. It took a while, but the
Roman Church has now caught up with the Reformers. First, a vernacular liturgy; next Communion “in two kinds.” There was theoretically a cup of wine
for the laity as well as a wafer—theoretically because the cup was empty by the
time I and most others got to it.
The young woman administering it showed us its emptiness with an
ecclesiastical version of that slightly apologetic hand gesture usually
translated as “Whatcha gonna do?”
What I am going to do is make another Visitation the next chance I get.
The
insufficiency of symbolic blood in the morning was more than compensated for in
the afternoon, which found us at the theater of St. Anne’s Warehouse in
Dumbo. So many good things in my life
have come my way by virtue of advantageous marital connections. Jessica Richards, Joan’s first cousin
once removed, is the Stage Manager of the National Theatre of Scotland. Many months ago, in Edinburgh, she
alerted us to a production of Let the
Right One In that the NTS would
be bringing to Brooklyn. My
wonderful Brooklyn daughter-in-law, Katie Dixon, organized tickets for us.
St. Anne's Theater brochure from the Internet
I
had not before heard of Let the Right One
In and am still nonplussed as to the
meaning of the title. But Katie
knew all about it having seen the movie made from the Swedish novel (by John
Lindqvist, 2004) in which it originated.
It is no easy task to characterize Let
the Right One In succinctly. It is a Harlequin romance for
deviants. As social drama, it proposes
a promising cure for schoolyard bullying.
Here is a vampire story in comparison with which Bram Stoker’s Dracula merely sucks. Above all, it is probably the bloodiest
piece of dramaturgy I have ever seen, and I have seen Titus Andronicus at the London Globe! We had brief words with Jessica before the performance, and
she said that she thought our seats in Row G ought to be “far enough back to
avoid the splatter”.
The
themes of the play are actually serious ones, but the cleverness of its plot is
of a sort that should not be spoiled by a reviewer. If you should have a chance to see it—and the run will be
extended, I think—by all means seize it.
It wouldn’t hurt to do a preliminary brush-up on your vampirology,
though. A couple of crucial points
on which I was rusty caused me some initial confusion. Vampires are potentially eternal. They hunger, or rather thirst for
nourishment, but do not suffer our ordinary mortal aging process. The old stake through the heart will do
them in, though, and so will a blaze of sunlight. This means that they must be creatures of night and of the
gloom, and avoid the light of day.
A vampire’s life is no bed of roses, and she needs a little help from
her friends.
Rebecca Benson in the role of Eli
In
this play she gets that help in a somewhat disturbing fashion that left me
pensive. But of course what I
found myself most deeply pondering on the clackety train-ride home was the extraordinary
conceit of the ingestion of blood.
How can it at once be at the center of the highest spiritual aspiration
and the most hideous carnal terror?
