Resurrection and Awakening

This year, as usual, we agonized about who shoul go to church for midnight services on Pascha (known in the West as "Easter"), and who should stay home - both among parents and children. Amy and I have ended up taking turns, recently, alternating year by year, in terms of who stays home with the children and who goes to church. But this year was more interesting, because there was some exploration of the unprecedented phenomenon of all five of us going to church at midnight.

This is especially ambitious, not just because we have three small children, but because Orthodox paschal services are quite extensive, especially in the Russian church, and they tend to involve going to church circa midnight and coming home just prior to dawn, with more than three hours of church services followed by a magnificent communal megafeast. But somehow I found it hard to believe the fivesome night on the church was going to happen, and as we assessed several factors, the consensus was that I should go to church, and Amy should stay home with at least two children, but the critical question was whether Ian could go to church. One factor was that Ian is on vacation this week, so between the Sunday holiday and several days of no school, he should be able to recover a few hours of lost sleep. Amy decided tentatively that he should stay home, but Ian was quite persistent in begging to go to church, and finally we decided to give it a try.

So just after midnight, I got up, and once the car was ready and some heating had been circulated in it, I carried Ian out to the car. (He slept on the lower bunk, in anticipation of my upcoming job...) Ian slept all the way to church, and showed no signs of wanting, or being able, to wake up when we got there, so I situated the car at the edge of the deck by the back door of the hall. I could see him from the deck, and the deck was lined up right next to the altar, with the windows open, so I could listen to the entire service quite well while also attending to him. He stirred a few times, and I went to the car to make sure he didn't need any help, but each time, he went back to sleep, and I went back to the deck for my dual vigil.

Finally, since I didn't want him to miss the most important part of the Liturgy, I took him in toward the end. I carried him initially, but soon he was on his feet, more or less mimicking a marionette. However, over time he became ever more alert, an eventually he was clearly responding to the service, singing along, sharing the Paschal greeting with anyone who approached him.

This was something of a risk, because it seemed possible that he might need to sleep through the entire service, or might just be miserable the whole time, but at the meal, he was quite expansive, although his entire meal consisted of a Paschal egg (I guess he didn't have much of an appetite at 4:00 a.m.) But it seemed possible that the experience might be very formative for him, and that he might respond to it very well.

One thing worth pointing out is that an Orthodox Paschal service is a bit like the exact opposite of a funeral, if you can imagine such a thing. Where funerals take place in the bright morning, but the interior is dark and sombre and people are dressed in black and sobbing, an Orthodox paschal service takes place in the "dead" of night, and yet the entire church is blazing with candle-light and incense, with a jubilant choir and both clergy and congregation swept off their feet with joy in Christ's Resurrection. And just as, when people do cry at funerals, the whole phenomenon is contagious, and a few sniffles in one corner can soon overtake the whole crowd, on Pascha, the exultation moves from the priests to the faithful almost like a conflagration. I didn't know if a sleepy seven-year-old woudl grasp this, but I felt like he should have a chance to experience it.

After church, Ian told me that when he first heard the Paschal greeting "Christ is Risen," ..."I just felt all happy." That was all I neede to know. Late the next morning, after a sound sleep, he was telling Daniel that church was "a little bit like Heaven," and by the end of the day, he was encouraging me to take Daniel to Paschal services in the future.

Of course, being Ian, there was some technical engagement to the experience as well. We came home around 5:30, through a pre-dawn mist which compelled me to take a slightly roundabout detour past a couple of fruit orchards. (Ian said someone should take a picture...) And of course I was inclined to send him directl to bed when we got home. However, he asked if he could get one thing from his Pascha basket before going to bed - a bit like Christmas Eve... The "one thing" turned out to be a very selective item - a military helicopter from Auntie Ann's Pascha Parsel - assembly required, which might have been the biggest appeal of the selection. By now, his mind was functioning at full blast, and then some, but it was cutting into sleep-time, so I told him he needed to go to bed. He told me, "I just need to put on the wheels." Next thing I knew, he was looking for a screwdriver. But I finally persuaded him to go to bed, once the vehicle was assembled.

By the time we got home, Daniel had apparently woken up, realized that Ian wasn't on the upper bunk, and gone of to the master bedroom to join Mommy and Madeleine. This left Daniel's bunk empty, so I decided to sleep there, and I asked Ian whether he wanted to sleep up top or in the lower bunk. Ian elected to sleep in the lower bunk, so we went to sleep side by side, like two soldiers resting their bones after an exhausting but exhilarating day on the campaign.

(April 24, 2011)