Circumspencing the Globe

It’s Sunday afternoon, Day 19. I’m in Bergen still and stayed at a hostel last night. I was assigned Bed Number 16, an upper bunk in the corner of a big room. I slept well. But not as well as the creature in the upper bunk nearest me. His (its) breathing noises indicated he (it) is not completely human. At least half goose. Probably hails from the Island of Dr. Moreau, transported to this hostel by the Austrian girly-man mentioned a few entries ago, as an act of vengeance against me. I slept until 9 and was surprised to find most of the other guests in the room still asleep. That might be because this hostel is also a nightspot. Check-in is at the bar and the bartenders assign you a room when they’re not mixing drinks.

I got ready and crept out of the dark room, through the dark bar and out onto the street. My ears were greeted by the glorious gonging of church bells. A well-dressed man and little girl ran along the sidewalk in the rain. Hoping they could lead me to a worship service, I followed them. They turned into a big, old church, the one from whence the bells rang. (First time ever using the word “whence”–thank you.) The church is Domkirken, a 12th or 13th century building listed on the tourist map. I went inside and asked if there would be a service in English. A man told me it would be in Norwegian but would include a performance of Bach, whom he reminded me is “international.” It started in an hour. So I left to find breakfast, resisting the temptation of saying to the man, “I’ll be Bach.”

A few steps away, I turned into a cafeteria. The menu items were hand-scrawled in Norwegian on a chalkboard. I recognized some of the words but not most. I asked the lady behind the counter what the menu said. She just nodded. I pointed to the chalkboard and asked which items were available for breakfast. She said “okay.” I pinpointed specific words and said “in English?” She said “yes.” A very agreeable lady, she was the first person I’d encountered in Scandinavia who did not speak English. So I ordered the first item and some orange juice, which is deceptively called “juice appelskin.” Apple juice is called “juice eple.” The mystery meal turned out to be essentially a ham and cheese sandwich on a big, toasted poppyseed roll.

As I ate, a familiar cheesey love song played–“I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you…” That just about expressed the state of my soul toward God at the moment. It felt “dry.” Last night, I walked along the harbor alone, acknowledging in prayer that I was never really alone. But while I intellectually affirmed God’s omnipresence, I didn’t feel like He was close. So I was really looking forward to the worship service.

Before I left the cafeteria, I asked for the WC (that’s “water closet,” for the uninitiated). There were two tiny ones, side by side, but only one had a light switch on the outside wall. Rather than simply use the one with the switch, I was determined to figure out how to get the light on in the other one. Eventually I discovered that the one light switch turned on both lights simultaneously. This struck me as odd. If both bathrooms are occupied and the first person to finish doesn’t realize the other bathroom is occupied, he’ll likely turn out the light leaving the other person in the dark. But Europe is weird like that. As a result, much of the time I feel like I’m bumbling my way through. When I do something genuinely stupid, I shrug my shoulders and say to any witnesses, “American.” And when I do something VERY genuinely stupid, I shrug my shoulders and say to any witnesses, “Canadian.”

I left the cafeteria and entered Domkirken. Its dimensions were grand. It was dimly lit in yellow light, full of grays and browns. The stain glass was beautiful but not vibrant, perhaps because the day itself was gray. Where there was stone, it was ashen and gnarled. Where there was plaster, it was textured and irregular, not smooth. A choir sat in front to the right. There were string instruments and wind instruments and a white-maned conductor. The congregation seemed tightknit, with various age groups represented and general greetings taking place before things got underway. The little kids were corraled in the back corner of the main sanctuary, which I thought would present problems if any kid were to forsake his or her “indoor voice” and compete with the minister.

The service began with the choir. The first few notes instantly subdued the entire space, filling its every nook, so pure and sublime. Taken aback, I found my eyes welling up with tears. I felt like I’d returned home, not in a geographical sense but a spiritual one. I was in the household of God. This, I believed, was the answer to my prayer from the night before.

As the service continued, the minister ascended the wooden spiral staircase to the raised wooden pulpit area–I don’t know the name for it. There he preached. At first, I thought I could follow the gist of his message by his intonations and emphatic gesturing and some of the words. He spoke of Christos. But, in truth, he could have also spoken of the Great Pumpkin and I wouldn’t have known. As the sermon continued, I began to lose focus. The minister began to sound like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. And by the time the choir sang for the third or fourth time, I started scanning the singers for the prettiest one. It was a tie, one standing in back of the other, and both obscured from my view most of the time by the conductor’s big gray head. It struck me, though, that God knew exactly how my mind would wander and where the pretty singers would be. “Are you searching for Me or something else?” I imagined Him asking me.

At the end of the service, communion was offered. This was a Catholic mass and I’m not Catholic. I don’t know the rituals. Although I believe in Jesus, I’m Jewish on my father’s side and not used to the Catholic icons. My congregation back home is “messianic” and essentially non-denominational, comprised of both Jews and gentiles. The bottom line is that I actually feel more at home in a synagogue than in a Catholic Cathedral. My inclination was to pass on the communion. But Jesus did say, in the course of a Passover seder, to take bread and wine as a symbolic means of remembering the sacrifice He would make of His body as atonement for sins. So at the last minute I stood up and got in line. I was the last one. As I waited for my turn, I felt something akin to performance anxiety. I didn’t want to do anything wrong or offend anyone or make myself look like a bumbler. I studied the procedure and when it was my turn, I took the wafer one of the priests handed me. I inspected it for a second. It was the size and shape of a nickel but the consistency of that bread you get at Ethiopian restaurants. (And “wafer-thin.”) The priest beside the first priest offered me the chalice to dip the biscuit in. As I dipped it, I must have done so with too much exuberance, because my thumb–and not just the biscuit–made contact with the liquid inside. Now, I’m aware that many Catholics believe in transubstantiation, the concept that taking communion is not merely symbolic but that the bread and wine actually literally, miraculously transform into the body and blood of Jesus at the moment communion is taken. So when I dipped my thumb into the wine (tasted more like juice eple, by the way), I touched blood. This, obviously, is not hygenic. But since I was the last one in line, no one was contiminated but me. And Jesus, maybe, if you take transubstantiation to its logical conclusion. And if the severe look the second priest gave me is any indication. Anyway, the whole episode proved to be one big distraction from the meaning and purpose of the practice and led me to the conclusion that it’s best to opt out of unfamiliar rituals, especially when they’re in Norwegian.

Tags: Bergen, Norway, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.