"Dead People Don't Come Back To Life"
"If the priest knows that a person who is living a notoriously evil life intends to come to Communion, the priest shall speak to that person privately, and tell him that he may not come to the Holy Table until he has given clear proof of repentance and amendment of life."

--The Book of Common Prayer (Episcopal) (1979)

I love that "notoriously."

I went to church voluntarily for the first time in seventeen years yesterday. It was out of curiosity, not belief--I've never believed going to church has any effect on behavior or morality for me (outside of acquainting me with the Bible, which I could have done on my own--and largely did), and if that's the case, then why go? I was interested to see how it would feel after all these years and Easter Sunday seemed as good a time to go as any. There were decided differences of course, between Trinity Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor.

St. Andrew's was much more architecturally impressive (like that really means anything from a theological or moral standpoint). The building dates from 1867, and the interior decorations were gorgeous. It was odd, then, that the service was largely "contemporary," whereas the liturgy in the sixties wood-panelled glory that was Trinity Episcopal was mostly "traditional." I decided not to take the Eucharist, as I don't believe in its literal or even symbolic truth. I realized during the ceremony that it can be interpreted as a metaphor for one's membership in the human community, but I suspect that many of the people who take it view it in a far more literal sense, so I thought it would be disrespectful to go up there myself (I was confirmed and everything, but it looks a lot different from my own perspective). For me, it would be like joining a minyan or reciting the shahada (and I'm sure the other participants wouldn't appreciate it one bit). Interestingly enough, I can still pretty much deliver the entire Nicene Creed from memory. The title quote for this post comes from the Easter sermon, incidentally.

It was an enormously interesting experience--maybe I'll go again in 2015.

What better way, then, to further celebrate Easter than to drop by Cinema Guild and watch an Italian slasher film made by a devout Catholic with an almost sociopathic disdain for human nature?* Mario Bava's Five Dolls For an August Moon (1970) is one of the most bizarre and entertaining movies I've ever seen. The plot is pretty simple--several people end up stranded on an island and kill each other off, most of the reasons having to do with money and a secret scientific formula. There is absolutely no reason to care about the characters, and their sheer venality makes it fun to see them get killed off to some incredibly groovy music by Piero Umiliani. This is, of course, the staple situation of every slasher movie, but Bava somehow manages to make it classy, unlike Michael Lehmann in Heathers (1989), where some truly dark and funny satire is undercut by the script's apparent need to have Winona Ryder appear in a quasi-heroic role (and by Christian Slater's mere appearance onscreen). I was going to continue my spiritual Easter journey by going to see the Javanese gamelan performance of The Mahabharata at Hill Auditorium, but the movie had somehow drained my energies. If you get a chance, definitely check it out.

Five Dolls, not Heathers.

Here's a truly inspiring summary and appreciation of a great career. Make sure you read to the very end.

It's the first genuinely nice day of the year--I think I'll go frolic or something.

*I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.