by Fred Moleck
Sidewalk Morning Prayer
When I drive to Mass on Sunday morning, I drive through a medical school complex in Pittsburgh, which includes a couple of hospitals, one university hospital, classroom buildings, and an institute or two.
This past Sunday on the sidewalk in front of one of the buildings was a picket line protesting low wages and working hours. At least that’s what I thought their signs said.
They were walking in an elliptical pattern while almost chanting call-and-response protests such as “Whadawewant?” “Higher wages” in those or similar words. The call was strong and the response was stronger.
They would lift their signs when they made their response—a ritual gesture if I ever saw one.
Of course, I tooted my Toyota horn and elevated my hand out of the window so God and everybody would see. I extended my thumb in solidarity. And that, too, was a ritual gesture.
My dad, a 1920s coal miner union supporter, would have been proud.
When I sounded my signal of favor, they all cheered and waved their signs at me and shouted what seemed to me an acclamation. Glee erupted from their faces. I was one with the protest.
All right, all right, so it wasn’t morning prayer, but it did have all the elements of ritual that I would be teaching that afternoon to a regional group of parish cantors and lectors.
The definition I use is an abridgment of a formula I learned many years ago:It was all there—a quasicircle movement, which could be seen as a ritual dance if one would be willing to really stretch the definition. Besides, dance is more easily said than elliptical movement.Repeated patternings of symbolic language relevant to and expressive of the community that generated that language.
There were the versicles and responses that were repeated as often as the elliptical dance-type was in motion. The ground theme is: we want it and we want it now.
It was profoundly relevant to them, and it certainly expressed what they were feeling at the time. All the elements were there: repeated patternings; symbolic language; relevancy; expressive power; reflective of the community.
I think I had some impact on an expansion of their symbolic language. When I went home the same way after Mass, two of them were holding what looked like a bed sheet with three-foot letters: “Honk if you are with us” or something like that.
The traffic light changed, so I had to get on my way. Again, I honked my horn, displayed a vigorous thumbs up and graciously accepted the second acclamation they shouted back to me.
Two acclamations from the vox populi ain’t bad for a Sunday morning in Pittsburgh . . . considering that Pittsburgh is a union town.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net