At a school, I am in charge of liturgy, planning a mass of resurrection. The chapel space is now a performance space, a large theater semi­‐round. Near the altar area is a ritual coffin, oversized, with thick walls of redwood. It appears more like a vault or a large baptismal tank. There is a lid nearby but it is symbolic and not designed to put in place. In the drama, I am to lie down in the coffin and sit up at the appropriate time.

AM aware of all the students who also have roles in the mass and all the rest who will soon be arriving to participate. Finally too a celebrant arrives, making some last-­minute tweaks of liturgical details. Usually a priest plays the role set for me but I am keeping it. It’s going to be quite a luminous procession. There are other performance elements including a banner that will be lowered from the fly space. There are some elaborate configurations of candles that will be moved, lit in sequences.

I am suddenly aware that my mother is present, observing. She is wearing her choir robe, more of a cape of iridescent blue silk  stamped all over with small black logos:

OAK GROVE BAPTIST  CHURCH CHOIR

I am concerned that mother will at last be horrified to discover and have to reckon with the abomination of my involvement with Catholicism and the extreme ritual of the mass. I keep some hope that she will “get” what is going on.

I see other old friends, former faculty, arriving along with old friends from Tennessee. One of these my mother calls out to by name, but I must correct her that this is the brother of who she thought he was. She chuckles her way through how much alike they look.

As move into the liturgy, I am aware that there are twin celebrants, one tall and the other short, almost dwarf-­like, very affected, beyond theatrical and beyond grotesque, truly aberrant in appearance. I am not sure they are still comfortable with me taking the coffin role. Maybe I should offer to defer or just go ahead and step out of the picture. Perhaps that part will just be skipped over and we will have a low liturgy instead. But all is proceeding, and I sit down in the coffin—feeling much like a small child who is immersed in a very large old-­fashioned bathtub.

As I lie down in the coffin, I am deeply yearning for Mother to accept the intensity of my involvement, my commitment, my peculiar accomplishment—to understand the gravity of things, the importance of these ritual acts.

The celebrant is directing all the variants that he wants in the immediate pacing of things. I await the formal procession and my cue to sit up and then to stand as I am called to make and will take on the appropriate modes and moments.

I am wary of Mother observing from her distance.