Semana Santa continued

After Good Friday, the rest of Holy Week was one long day into night into day. On Saturday evening there was choir rehearsal. I got there late and found the group struggling with a peculiar but nonetheless frequently occurring situation: that of having to put the final touches on music that Luis Alberto had begun teaching them in previous weeks--without Luis Alberto. Apparently our fearless leader had come at the beginning of the rehearsal, but had left, because he was going to spend the night in vigil in order to prepare himself to sing the Pregón Pascual in the central moment of the Easter service.

The Pregón is truly a special piece of music. It was written by a Peruvian songwriter for the Easter Mass, and it's sung by the choir and a soloist just after the Easter fire is lit: a moment of meditation that moves the celebration from anticipation to fulfillment, from the vigil to the Mass; a moment during the last hour of the night when everyone stands with their candles lit, hundreds of tiny lights flickering in solidarity in anticipation of the dawn, knowing that the light they await has already come with the Resurrection and that soon, now, their fullness of joy will arrive with the morning. And the Pregón begins with a hushed solo: "Light of Christ... You who sleep in the shadows of the night, you who sleep in the shadows of death... Get up, and be illuminated by the light... Get up, and let yourself be swept up in life, in love!" And each verse, sung first by the soloist and then by the choir, repeats over and over again Que se levanten, Let them rise up... "Let the oppressed voices rise up, let the abused children rise up, let the tortured bodies rise up, let the liberated poor rise up...!" The words are very specific to Latin Amerca and the whole thing is a particularly Peruvian expression of that Easter longing for renewed life. The lyrics literally call Christ out of the tomb, and yet they also say things like, “Let our America be one united people,” concrete, social-political cries for justice and peace. It’s amazing.

…and so I ended up directing Saturday night’s choir rehearsal too, because Luis needed time and space to get ready to carry the solo part of this soaring meditation before all four sectors of our parish. Understandable. (I do very much like being the choir director, I’m discovering, especially when I have different instruments and different voice parts to lead and cue and bring together, like we did at Easter. :) )

After the rehearsal we went to Sheila’s house for what was unmistakably the oddest Easter vigil of my life, but also quite possibly the most moving. Sheila’s parents own a pool hall and the whole choir trooped over there to hang out from 11 pm to 3 am, when we had to go back to the church and from there to the soccer field to be ready to start the service at 4 am. I had brought Hershey’s chocolate and shredded coconut from the US to make chocolate nests for Easter, so I brought them from my house and walked around Tupac a little with Juancho, Robert, and Juana looking for more chocolate and some kind of candy to go on top. Arm in arm we walked and one by one they told me about their hearts, their relationships, their work, their lives... Then I went back behind the pool hall with Sheila and Eymi to make the chocolate nests. Sheila’s house isn’t a house, it’s one of these shacks made out of woven-bamboo estera and tin roofing, wooden boards for a floor, and we had to walk by her parents sleeping in their bed to get from the door into the kitchen. But there was a refrigerator outside to let the candy harden in. (Sheila, by the way, is in college studying to be an architect.)

When we did a little prayer service around 2 am, we attempted to sing the Pregón even without Luis or the lyrics, and I ended up doing the solo part... and then during the musical interlude, Alfredo said to me, "Kata! Pray!" I just looked at him, and then, as everyone was waiting, I started praying... in Spanish, in front of everyone, giving thanks for that night and the morning that was coming and our friendship. I don't think I said anything brilliant, but the words just flowed, in a language not my own, as if something outside of me was speaking through me. I was actually serving, ministering, to this group of people that had taken me into their country, their homes, their choir, their conversation, so that I wouldn't be alone here... Later, singing a song called The Prophet, my friend Juana leaned on my arm and said to me, "I already found my prophet. It's you!" I was amazed and humbled. We finished the song and spent the rest of the night playing, singing, dancing until it was time to go.

Out on the soccer field we rehearsed "Gloria, gloria aleluya!" in the pitch darkness while everyone arrived and got set up. The moon was full and there were clouds moving around it in the sky, and now and again a star appeared, reminding me, for anyone who’s read it, of the moment in The Lord of the Rings when Sam Gamgee sees a single star shine through the smoke of Mordor and “the beauty of it smote his heart” because there was light there beyond the reach of any shadow. The service included fireworks, a bonfire, the Pregón, readings, candles, holy water, music... and by the time we got to Communion, it was light. There was a bright, fresh, laughing light in the faces of all my friends and everybody milling around hugging people on the soccer field after it was all over.

(While we were still singing the final song, one of my students from the school came up in the crowd of people surrounding the choir and held up his index finger and thumb about an inch apart. This sign here means un ratito, "just a little minute," and is used universally in Lima to pull people out of what they're doing if you want to talk to them. Sheila did it to me during choir rehearsal, and I had to stop what I was doing with the musicians and walk over to her to talk to her privately, apparently because this was something she couldn't say to me from ten feet away. She asked me if her cousin could come to the Easter vigil even though she's not in the choir. I stared at her incredulously, tried to politely express the idea of It's your house, invite whoever you want!! and can we talk about this after rehearsal?, and went back to trying to fix the music. I've done un ratito myself to interrupt teachers in the middle of their classes to ask them about choir things. The interruption is not considered rude; in fact, it's considered rude to ignore the person trying to get your attention. But I seriously could not believe that Rafael was doing this while I was still singing the final song of the Resurrection Mass! I gave him a look that said, Do I look available right now?? and then ignored him until the song was finished.)

After Mass we had a delightful Easter breakfast with the other house, and after breakfast I went back to my house to sleep, having been up for 26 hours straight.