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"Quem Quaeritis?" or, "Whom do you seek?"

The Recognition and Investiture of Marc Handley Andrus as the Eighth Bishop of California
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, California
The Feast of St. Mary Magdalene
Saturday, the Twenty-second of July
Eleven O'Clock in the Morning
A.D. MMVI

 by Paul Parish
copyright ©2006 by Paul Parish

"All liturgy is dance," says the Reverend Professor Louis Weil, one of the Anglican communion's greatest authorities on Christian liturgy. Professor Weil, who teaches at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, was partly responsible for planning the 2-hour ceremony to invest the new Episcopal Bishop of California which took place in San Francisco Saturday, July 22, 2006, at 11 AM. It pricked my interest to hear that the ceremony would include a 4-minute ballet; the whole thing reminded me how Balanchine when he was a boy used to make an altar out of chairs, dress up to the hilt, make portentous gestures and pretend to be a bishop and celebrate Mass.

The entire ceremony could be profitably studied as performative speech act ("Do you accept Bishop Marc as the new Bishop of California?" 2000 voices: "We do!"), as performative gesture (the old bishop hands over the crozier to the new bishop), and as a site-specific choreographic event, for they made brilliant use of the gigantic Grace Cathedral's possibilities.

Like the great medieval cathedrals, Grace is laid out in the shape of a cross, with a long axis facing east-west and a shorter transept facing north-south. The main altar was placed that day in the crossing, so all aisles led to the main action, with processions piercing the body of the congregation along every dimension. There are two choral moments (when the congregation break ranks to kiss each other and "give the Peace" and when the whole body flow towards the the altar to take communion and then return to their seats); most of the movement comes from the priests. The cathedral's tremendous pipe-organ has banks of pipes at both ends of the building, and when an alarum needs to be sounded to call attention to upcoming events, a colossal noise can be made from a new direction.

Perhaps the most pregnant moment came when the house was full, of strangers to witness (including Jewish dignitaries and the Roman Catholic Archbishop) and of all the local Episcopal hierarchy to participate, when a stunning fanfare blasted us all from the front of the building. THe great doors were then thrown open: sunlight flooded the space in silence, and as the clock began to strike 11, the Bishop-to-be crossed the threshold (with an entourage including the newly elected female head of the Protestant Episcopal Church). He then advanced to the altar and petitioned to be recognized. The dignitaries there asserted that he had been elected, asked the congregation if they still wanted to go through with it, and by acclamation thousands of voices cried "yes!" and the compact was sealed.

Cathedrals are of course supposed to be "oriented" to the east — though few are, and in fact Grace Cathedral's situation, at the very top of Nob Hill, puts its altar at the west end of the building, so the sunlight poured in (in July) from the east as if this were Stonehenge. This ceremony made a point of noticing the convergence of cosmic and earthly time. (I could not help remembering that the coffin of Princess Diana crossed the threshold of Westminster Abbey as Big Ben tolled noon.)

The medieaval pageantry is colorful: literally, it is color-coded, processions of banners, and the costumes! clerics in black, white, red, some embroidered in gold, with stoles of many colors. It's visually intriguing and dramatic in itself. The actual ballet fit into it beautifully, did its job, and made a subtle segue into the next bit. It was a very satisfying liturgy. After a reading from the (apochryphal) Gospel according to Mary Magdalene (it was her feast day), a young woman ran flying down the main aisle in the manner of Isadora Duncan, trailing dark red veils. She pushed past two angels to clasp the main altar with a wide embrace and lamented in postures drawn from the "Lamentation" of Martha Graham. The dancer (Sylvia Miller-Mutia) was acting out the Easter story: the Magdalene had come to the tomb, found Jesus' body missing, given way to grief, whereupon Jesus (David McCaulay, who I'm told used to be a member of the Alvin Ailey company) manifested himself, proclaimed the good news, and then led her running up into the choir and way up into the pulpit (lodged halfway up one of the Gothic pillars), from which he showed her his father's kingdom and that it was for everybody.

The gestures were large, clear, musical, and unmisunderstandable. Carla da Sola, the choreographer, had worked with a specially commissioned new score by Carson Cooman that was highly effective, simple, plangent, and brief — there was no false note in either music nor dance; when they got to the Hallelujahs she soared around in one slow, exultant pirouettte in attitude, just one, and then following Jesus she led the angels and some priests back towards the Eastern door down to the baptismal font for a renewal of baptismal vows, since she was the first witness to the resurrection and Easter always begins with new water, and the new bishop could began his reign by blessing the people with holy water.... assisted by about fifty teenagers, dressed significantly in purple t-shirts and blue jeans (one girl in shorts) who were also dipping their sprigs of lavender in their bowls of holy water and going up all the aisles sprinkling people....

Perhaps it should be pointed out that this ceremony revived an ancient tradition: it's generally agreed that a little play dramatizing this exact incident, the Magdalene's coming to the tomb, was performed in the middle ages at the Easter mass, and is generally agreed to be the origin of modern European theater.

There were five processions to start with, including a Chinese lion dance to lead the parade of bishops. In a ceremony of this size — thousands of people, two hours long — there was always something significant going on. The most touching came when the new bishop took off his mitre so he could embrace the embassies from the ethnic ministries more comfortably. It gave a clear sign of how the world should expect him to exercise his authority.

But the most profound came at the end, when the new bishop showed that "growth" we expect in a drama; he had entered a petitioner, asking to be recognized, but by the end, when he dismissed the people, he had taken on the burden of his office, accepted authority, and become a teacher. He adopted a hieratic posture one has seen in paintings and monuments from a thousand years ago: crowned with his mitre, holding his staff of office in one hand and raising the other hand as if about to swear on a bible, he departed from the language printed in the program: after the usual "Go forth in the Name of Christ" he continued: "Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Clothe the naked. Comfort the sorrowful. Counsel he doubtful." Or something like that. Nobody I asked remembered the particular words in exactly the same way, but all agreed it had been a valediction of the most serious kind, and he had told us what we should do.

The ONE THING the ceremony really needed was some hymn that everybody knew by heart: like "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow." All the music was good — very good — but there was nothing that would give all the people a chance to throw their heads back and sing something from the heart that would give that deep deep sense of belonging to a community.

Photo: St. Edward the Confessor.

Volume 4, No. 29
July 31, 2006

copyright ©2006 Paul Parish
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©2006 DanceView