i missed church yesterday, palm sunday. it bothered me, more than it should have perhaps, but got me thinking about this season in general and why it feels so important to me. i think about growing up catholic, about somber, solemn churches, stations of the cross in the rain, with triumphal entries and whips and crowns of thorn and darkness. images flicker through my head - doing stations of the cross every friday through lent in grade school. a snapshot scene from a movie i must've seen as a child - it's the part where pilate is asking the crowds who he should release, and they're all shouting 'barrabas! barrabas!' and there's mary, screaming at the top of her lungs, crying, 'jesus! jesus!'. or the quietness of the church on good friday, silence so thick that it could swallow you whole. heavy like fog, like struggling to breathe, like weights on your shoulders. even as a kid, you knew it wasn't the time to eat your cheerios loudly, or play on the kneelers or color in your coloring book. you didn't know why, but it was serious, it was a funeral. year after year, the same heaviness grows in the air for forty days, culminating into this one week. this one week that changed everything.

i wasn't one of those kids who got it. it took me years to know god. growing up i merely went through the motions, not because i didn't have a longing for god, but because i simply didn't know that longing existed. but even so. even so, holy week is so prominent in my mind, for its heaviness, its uncomfortability - as it should be. can you imagine that last week? so intense, the climax of christ's life - riding in on a donkey, the crowds, the excitement of it all. the disciples must have felt so cool, so popular, walking in behind jesus. there must have been intimate moments, even though they didn't know they only had a few days left, jesus knew - there must have been a closeness during those last days. jesus washing their feet, celebrating passover with them. and finally the garden, the dark of that night, the chaos, confusion, terror. and so on the story goes. i didn't get it then, but i recognize it now - i was participating in something sacred all those years. something holy - a holy story, a holy mourning, truly grieving the death of christ. nevermind the resurrection - because in those moments, the catholics got it. it's almost like they choose to forget that christ rose - they forget what's coming on sunday. rather, we're the disciples, peter, john, matthew. we're the weeping women, we're mary and joseph, and our worlds have just crumbled around us. we're standing amidst the debris, mouths open, hands at our sides - dumbfounded, confused, broken, numb. our jesus has died - and we don't know about the resurrection yet. our minds have just been scourged with horrible scene after scene - arrested in the garden, beaten by the guards, questioned by pilate, more beating, more questions, the heavy cross, the dusty road, nails, tears, brokenness, death. i can't actually say i know what that would feel like - what it would feel like to stand by as your entire world crumbled around you. but i've had some awful times, mornings you wake up and for a few seconds, forget that everything is hell. and then you remember and it's a stomach dropping moment, having to remember it all over again, trick yourself into thinking maybe all the bad stuff isn't real. i bet it felt a lot like that. for two days, it felt like that.

and so although i now live most of my life in the middle, not quite catholic, not quite anything with labels - holy week. holy week, i want the dark church. i want the heaviness in the air, the frightening silence, the feeling of chaos. i long for those traditions. i can't quite explain why. it just feels right to me. i want to walk that story, to live it, know it. i want to grieve. because yes, christ rose, but for two days, he didn't. and for two days, those followers knew what it would feel like if he never had. and although it's good again, although it gets better than ever before, i doubt those followers ever forgot what those two days felt like. and that's a part of our story. it's a part of our story that i don't want to forget either. because what's resurrection without death?