The joy of standing with arm upraised

The Column: 04.05.24

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It was plain and simple joy to sit in a packed church on Easter Sunday and sing the Alleluias and listen to the story of the women finding the tomb empty and wait in a long line for Communion. We Episcopalians have been known to marry existentialists, hedonists, individualists, pantheists, Baptists, and disAnglified sophisticates, and it’s lovely to have them all under the tent to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection regardless of what doubts may flutter in their heads. I grew up among separatist fundamentalists, a joyless and judgmental lot, and this was entirely different, public happiness openly shared. The women at the tomb where his body had been laid were afraid but there was no fear among us on Sunday morning, and in Manhattan, where one’s mind easily turns to dark scenarios, this joy is palpable.

And after Communion, we stood and sang a beloved Catholic hymn whose chorus, “And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up on the last day,” brings many of us to tears, and though Episcopalian, members of the church of the wingtips and tweed vests, in our wave of feeling we raise one arm like storefront Pentecostals, and I think of my dead brother, my grandson Freddy, my parents and my wife’s parents, and feel the glow of faith that we will be reunited. This faith is not an intellectual feat; it feels miraculous and I carry it around all day.

Life is miraculous. The Lord is good and his mercy endureth forever. I walked away from the separatists when I was 20. My father was faithful to them all his life and was disappointed by my erratic ways but never said a word about it to me. He was a carpenter and I might’ve become one too but I was kicked out of shop class in 8th grade because I was joking around while running a power saw; Mr. Orville Buehler said, “All you do is talk so I’m sending you up to Speech,” and so, instead of a life on the assembly line, I wound up in broadcasting. I am a stranger to the toolbox; my wife does the home repairs. My father was terrified any time he had to speak in public; I stood on a stage in Newberry, S.C., on Good Friday and told stories for two hours without notes and loved every minute of it and especially when I had them sing, “It Is Well With My Soul” united in a cappella harmony. They knew the words by heart, and also “America” and “Going to the Chapel” and “How Great Thou Art,” and I didn’t see anybody googling with their cellphones.

Life is good. Surgeons can run a tube up a vein in your groin and repair your innards easily where years ago they had to open up your chest and create Frankenstein scars that brought your career as a swimsuit model to a crashing halt. GPS is being developed for home use so that as a man stands at the toilet, a voice says, “Aim slightly to the right.” Beautiful names are being given to infants that didn’t used to be available, like Seraphina, Arabella, Camila, Penelope, Autumn, Aurora, Prairie. In my lifetime, longevity has lengthened –– look at the obits –– if you live to be 96 or 97, it means you can do dumb things well into your seventies and still have time to recover. Me, for example. Eighty-one and I’m writing a novel although the Age of White Male Authorship is long past. I’m still out on the road doing shows, talking, singing, hoping to get a spot on the Ed Sullivan show. That was on Sunday nights and all of America sat down and watched Ed, he replaced Sunday night Bible study, it was the beginning of the decline of Protestantism, but thank God we still observe Easter and are capable of joy at finding the tomb empty.

And then on the long walk home afterward, it struck me that I hadn’t thought for a single moment about the Mafia Don running for the White House, the incredible con man selling his souvenir Bibles for $59.99, the most despised politician in our history, after Jefferson Davis, hoping to sneak into power via the Electoral College. There is nothing about the Resurrection that calls this man to mind. He isn’t part of that story. He is making America pray again but not in the way he might like to imagine.

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