Corpus Christi

Thirty-five days ago, I left Poland. It has not yet left me and I don't really expect that it will. I am still sorting through what I saw, felt, heard, and experienced. Some of these things may take years to put together and some I may have already forgotten. Only God knows how these things will finally take shape or root within me.

There is one experience that I actually continue to think about almost daily. Going in, I thought about this with almost anthropological interest, but very little emotional attachment. Yet, now, I think of it constantly. When I think of this situation, I feel grief and frustration, sadness and hurt, impassioned and, yet, paralyzed.

By Manederequesens (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

On Thursday, May 26th, Roman Catholic Poles, along with Roman Catholics around the world, celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi. In Krakow, the Friend of Calvin who came to visit me and I were interested to see the observance of this feast. It is a national holiday in Poland with many shops and places closed for observance. There is a procession from Wawel Castle to Krakow's Main Square and St. Mary's Basilica.

The procession involves a priest carrying the Host, the consecrated bread of communion, in a monstrance under a canopy, which is itself carried by deacons. Behind the priest is a procession of hundreds, if not a thousand, people. There were soldiers, nuns (so many nuns), monks, priests, bishops, first communicants, town elders, town leaders, church leaders, Roman Catholic bishops and archdeacons, and probably several groups that I missed or don't know how to classify.

Krakow's Main Square, one of the largest in Europe, was filled with people who were not in the procession, but who came to see it, to honor the Host, to hear the sermon (presumably about Holy Communion and the presence of Christ. It was in Polish), and to receive communion. People stood(!) on pavement and cobblestones to listen. There were young men in dress shirts, ties, and dark slacks, wearing portable speakers to broadcast the sermon all around the square so that all could hear.

As the sermon concluded, the priest carrying the host (at the very front of the procession), began to move again- toward the Basilica and the altar. As the monstrance passed, people knelt. Some bowed deeply, but others fully knelt on the cold stones, crossing themselves. Some wept and stayed down. Others stood again after the Host had gone by. These people were acknowledging what they believe is the Presence of Christ, the Real Presence, in the wafer framed in the monstrance. (See the pic above for an example of an empty monstrance.)

I was pulled along in the crowd until I realized I was very close to where communion was going to be celebrated. Suddenly I realized that not only was I not in the right frame of mind to observe this, but that there were people behind me who would like to be closer. So I moved through the tightly packed crowd back to the more open air of the square, toward the clock where my friend and I hurriedly gestured that we would meet.

In chatting, we decided to go for a coffee, but when we sat down at a table in the square, I ordered bison grass vodka and apple juice. In a rare moment of actually feeling my feelings at the time they were occurring, I realized that I was mad. By this time in my trip, I had toured Jewish history sites in Warsaw. Friend of Calvin and I had gone to Auschwitz and Birkenau just two days before Corpus Christi. In all my reading, I knew that Poland (not alone in this) has not ever dealt fully with its anti-Jewish history (or present). Due to Germany's attack on Poland, most Poles felt/feel that they were more sinned against than sinning in World War II (and preceding), despite the complicity of Polish men and women in turning in their Jewish, homosexual, Roma, and "political" neighbors. Poland does not acknowledge complicity in the Holocaust, despite making money through "dark tourism"- the thousands of people who travel to see the concentration and death camps each year.

Additionally, Poland is currently struggling with government leaders (and communities) who want to keep their borders closed and reject immigrants. Anti-Jewish activities have seen a rise in the past few years, as well as anti-immigrant displays and commentary. All of this knowledge, of this awareness, of all the grief, came swirling into a head as I poured cold vodka down my throat and thought about the procession I had just seen.

People had reverently, tenderly, carefully acknowledged the presence of Christ in pressed bread, but would they do the same to their neighbor? Had they done the same in 1942 or 1968 (Polish Jewish Exclusion) or today? The Feast of Corpus Christ is nearly 1000 years old. This means that Poles (and others) likely observed this same procession in the German occupation. There were probably soldiers and others who knelt, receiving the body of Christ in their mouth, and then rose to go back to the hideous work of the war and its atrocities.

Christ is as present in the host, in the bread and wine, as he is in the person next to us. Furthermore, He is as present therein as he is IN us as we do anything in his name.

The truth is that most people willfully ignored what was happening around them or followed orders because they either believed what they had been told or shut their minds to the cognitive dissonance of the words of their faith and the words of their political leaders

We want to believe that we would be different. That we ARE different.

At least, I assume we do.

Most of us, though, still kneel reverently at the altar and, with Christ's body still in ours, make excuses for why we do what we do, say what we say, think what we think. It happens all the time.

How do we change that? What are the words, the steps, the turning that need to be done?

If Christ's presence in communion does anything, it gives us the strength to make that change. The power is actually IN us when we commune. We just have to be willing to join into the work, to participate in the change, to bear the cross of truth and to lift it high.

It seems likely that a very, very, very tiny percentage of people present in Krakow on 26 May 2016 were also present in that same procession in, say, 1943. Yet, the repercussions of the actions against Jewish neighbors and others, before and after, still reverberate through that country. And the repercussions of what I witnessed and felt on that day still reverberate through me.

Why Poland?

Beginning in mid-May, I will be going on sabbatical for 11 weeks. Entering my eighth year of service to the same congregation permits me 12 weeks of sabbatical leave that can be used for a variety of purposes. Sabbatical is not vacation, but does use one's yearly allotment for continuing education. (I already went on one week of Con. Ed. this year, so that's why 11 this summer.)

During my sabbatical, I will be going to Poland (by myself), going to the East Coast (with my kids), celebrating my tenth wedding anniversary (with my husband), and thinking about some future writing projects and possible additional education. Thinking about not being at the church I serve for 11 weeks is strange. It also causes me to realize how much of my self identity is attached to what I do, not my title necessarily, but literally what I do and the people for whom I do. That's probably material for another post.

The question I get most frequently about sabbatical is: Why Poland?

I'm going on a Jewish heritage trip. My maternal great-grandmother was from Warsaw (other
maternal great grandparents came from elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Russia, also Jewish). Throughout my life, I have read about the Holocaust, those who died therein, those who died trying to save neighbors, and those who saved their lives by refusing to help their neighbors.

I have never been anywhere in Eastern Europe. I have never seen a tattooed arm, digitized- to further reduce the humanity of the Jew in question to a number and no more. I wrestle daily, truly daily, with the fact that I am not a religious Jew. I have deep seeded grief about feeling as though I have abandoned the extended relatives who died in any capacity or who risked everything to leave. They did not do it for me, per se, or for my children or cousins or even for my mother. Well, not for us personally, but they did what they did to save their own lives- escaping pogroms, oppression, and hardship- and to have better chances for those who would come after them.

While it is certainly true that living well is honoring them, still I wrestle. And I haven't yet wrung out a blessing. The psychic limping comes from dragging the weight with me and not knowing how to carry it, wear it, embody it with honesty, faithfulness, and integrity.

I am going to Poland to see the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto, to say the mourner's Kaddish at the cemetery, walk along streets and listen to my guide (hired!) tell me about the history of Jews in that place. I am going to Krakow to walk the streets of Kazimierz, to pay my respects to the synagogues and shrines, and to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau. I am walking the parks, rafting a river, sitting in milk bars, and thinking... thinking... thinking.

I'm jokingly calling the trip Nosh, Daven, Grieve- a play on Eat, Pray, Love.

My mother reflected on not going on this trip with me because of the current anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish!) climate in Poland. An acquaintance as recently as two days ago mentioned the same to me, noting that while it is safe to travel, the political climate is very charged against Jews, which has happened again and again and again in Polish history. Poland, even with its map littered with the remains of concentration camps, has yet to acknowledge the historic reality of the Holocaust (the Shoah) and Polish complicity therein.

Why aren't you going to Israel, my mother asked and she was not alone.

Here's the really hard thing to admit: I do not feel like I deserve a birthright trip (a visit to Israel that is part of acknowledging and discovering one's Jewish heritage in the present). Even with mixed feelings about Israel's actions and the United States relationship thereunto, I do support the Israel's right to exist and the Jewish need for her.

But, since I am not even sure where my menorah is since I moved from Nome (in 2005), I do not feel a Jew in good standing in my mind and heart to go to Israel during this sabbatical.

I do, however, in my mind and heart, need to go to Poland. I need to see, feel, taste, and weep over what is some of the soil of my heart. I need to see the pain and mourn all that was lost, including that which I will never know, perceive, or comprehend. And I need to go to bear witness to Polish history toward Jews. I need to go- not primarily in my Lutheran pastor identity, but as a Jew looking for part of her story, part of the story of death, rejection, exclusion, and pervasive hope in G-d.

I need to go to whisper at some point, or several, that I have a good life and that I will not forget and that I will teach my children what it means to listen to the strike of a match to light a candle, to pray in a certain way at certain times, to look for mezuzahs, the words of the mourner's Kaddish, how to make a matzo ball, and how not to take safety or protection for granted, even in America.

Even in typing this, I have come to a realization. The Passover meal closes with the prayer and the cheer, "Next year in Jerusalem." I do not know that 2017 holds that for me, but I understand one thing. For this Jew, the road to Jerusalem goes through Poland.