(Wikicommons)
Palm Sunday in the year 2025.
In this season I find myself thinking Arthur Symons poem captures the moment…
Because it is the day of Palms,
Carry a palm for me,
Carry a palm in Santa Chiara,
And I will watch the sea;
There are no palms in Santa Chiara
To-day or any day for me,I sit and watch the little sail
Lean sideways on the sea,
The sea is blue from here to Sorrento,
And the sea-wincl comes to me,
And I see the white clouds lift from Sorrento
And the dark sail lean upon the sea.I have grown tired of all these things,
And what is left for me?
I have no place in Santa Chiara,
There is no peace upon the sea;
But carry a palm in Santa Chiara,
Carry a palm for me.
Here we are. Courting, as we seem to be, the collapse of a republic into the hands of plutocrats and a would be autocrat just so we can stick a thumb in the eye of the righteous and make sure the undeserving don’t get more than a push aside, is at once so sad and so banal.
The ancient of days is so distant. The dreams of death and renewal, so vague. Well, maybe the death part is vivid enough. But the dreary following is more worthy of ancient Hades or Sheol, grey and unending…
In the moment, it’s pretty hard to begin Holy Week with much more than Mr Symons’ flattened images…
Still…
As things advance, may the deeper possibilities reveal themselves.
I think of what follows the false dawn of Palm Sunday.
May holy Thursday rekindle our appetites for justice, may good Friday recall the cost of deeper possibilities, may the silence of holy Saturday teach us humility, and, and may Easter be more than a hollow recollection of some ancient story that has nothing to do with us…
We stumble into Holy Week.
May it take us to our better angels…
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