So it's Palm Sunday.
The Sunday before Easter.
My favorite Sunday of the year...
This Morning's Palm Sunday Service.
My family and I woke up early and left the house 15 minutes late to get to church (Isn't that always the way?) It's been a while since I've been to Church with them so I was definitely looking forward to having someone to goof off with when the service got boring...
Not to piss anyone off, but the Baptists just don't know how to do it...not the palms, not the service without a million and seven bible verses. I felt like I was in some sort of classroom, I was being educated, worse yet, educated with background music from Charlotte's Web.
Sadly, no amazing hymns, just ones that sounded like circus music.
It wasn't really bad till they got to the middle of the sermon and decided they needed to talk about the crucifixion. How people were crucified and just awful it really is. It was just as I was getting ready to cover my ears and run, my little sister tugged on my sleeve and asked me to take her out to the hall because she was feeling sick. She made it out to the hall, me asking if she was going to be okay, her saying no, and then she fainted.
Just fainted.
She just fucking collapsed. Right there. On the floor.
A 12 year old is only heft-able if they're cooperating, one that's passed out cold is somehow equal to a 100LB sand bag.
First I was shocked, I managed to get her over to a bench and lay her down on it, then I sent Josh(who was feeling sick as well.) for our dad. (Dad to the rescue!)
Then, I was kinda of pissed, what the heck is with this pastor that he thinks he needs to say these things in Church? Spasms and bleeding arteries? They're damn lucky it wasn't my mother on the floor. Had it just been a mention I wouldn't have flinched, but no, this was a good 10 minutes in vivid detail of just how much pain a body being crucified went though. (Thanks so much for the warning in advance.)
I ran to the downstairs of the Church and asked a lady for a cup of water, she seemed utterly unfazed when I answered her question as to what happened. (Maybe kids faint every palm Sunday at this Church?) And by the time I got back upstairs my little sister was laying on the bench, my parents by her, white as a ghost and pretty much unable to talk.
We got her out of there and she's fine now.
She did ask on the way to the car "Where were the palm crosses?"
That made me laugh, poor kid.
The real truth of the matter is that it's Palm Sunday, and the service they gave was a Good Friday service. (Last supper, crucifixion.) The Baptists in Vermont are obviously missing a few days on their religious calendar. And quite a few Palm trees as well.
Normally, Palm Sunday is an awesome Sunday.
Even as a kid it was one of my favorite Sundays because on the way into Church they hand you either a palm branch, or a cross made of a palm branch. It's like a little hand out, something you get to take home...
When I was 13-14 and working in the Church I got to help prepare for the Palm Sunday service, complete with making palm branch crosses. Where I learned that the left over crosses are kept till the following year and then burned, their ashes are then used to mark crosses on the foreheads of church goers that are blessed on Ash Wednesday. (I wanted to be a priest okay? This was some extremely cool stuff.)
What I really liked best was the atmosphere, everyone's happy, smiling, waving, greeting.
And the service is all about how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and people shouted "Hosanna in the highest!" It's just plain cool.
(Then there's the legendary Palm Sunday when I was 6, and our dad's brush fire got away from him and burnt up the entire front acreage of our former farm. Interrupting the fireman's annual pancake breakfast so they could come put it out. We haven't let him forget it yet. No matches are allowed today.)
Next Palm Sunday I'm going to go to a church that knows what the date is.
A day for praise, a day for palms.
Then the following Friday (if I choose to) I'll attend the Good Friday service.
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