Ascension

Ascension

My parents and my sister went on a Grand Canyon rafting trip some years ago. At one section of the Colorado, their raft bumped up against a rock or rapid, passengers were thrown around the boat, and my father was pushed out. My mother has described her view of him, his hair floating free about his head, as he descended through the water.

He wasn’t hurt, and was quickly wrestled back aboard. But the story—that image of him floating off—resurfaced when he died, not too long afterward. Perhaps my brother started it—when he went down to the funeral home to make arrangements, they asked him to confirm that they had the right body. My father had been washed; my brother said his hair was wet, had not yet been combed. “He looked alright,” my brother said, and it sounded like he might have also meant familiar. “He looked like he’d just stepped out of a pool.”

On more than one occasion, I’ve lost something I valued—for a day or two. Then I re-encounter it, hold it for a while, before I then, inevitably, lose hold of it forever. This happened with a penny from my father’s pocket—flattened and inscribed in one of those machines, on the journey that took him down the Colorado River. It also happened with a bracelet that was his, a necklace Girlfriend gave to me, a pocket rosary, a stone provided as a reminder of my baptism. It was only after these things were gone for good that I recognized I’d had a second chance at them—and felt stupid that I hadn’t been more careful. After all, it seemed, I had been given warning…

I wonder, sometimes, if it isn’t in this spirit of the second chance that my mother so vividly recalls my father’s fall into the river. If so, I hope she feels she took her second chance for everything that it was worth. I hope she can recall and cherish every moment in the days between his climb out of the water and his death.

I think of all of this because today may be the Feast of Christ’s Ascension. Today—in some parts of the world it’s not ‘til Sunday—is the day the Jesus rose up off the ground and floated toward the clouds. There may have been some angels, trumpet blasts, etc.

There’s a way, though, that it feels like the Feast of our Abandonment. Every painting that I’ve seen of it, if it includes apostles, has them looking very worried. There’s the majesty, the power and the glory, blah blah blah—but you can see the question in their faces: what of us? They look worried, pulling at their beards—a few seem to be questioning the angels (maybe: is there a way we can rethink this? We thought we had him back…)

It’s as if they only got it after Jesus left—they had had a second chance at him. I wonder what they thought of how they handled it, if they’d worry so much about his hands and feet and whether he could eat, if they’d realized they just had 40 days. For my part, I wish they’d asked some questions—and rustled up a scribe to write the answers down. Maybe with a little foresight, and some better record-keeping, we could have made it these two thousand years without Crusades, the Inquisition, Salem, Selma, Birmingham, Iraq.

Above the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem, the Chapel of the Ascension stands. It’s small, and bullet-shaped, and off the beaten path. My mother and I headed toward it on our own, because it wasn’t included in our tour itinerary. In the year 2000, when we went, it was maintained by the Arab Muslim residents of East Jerusalem. They believe it marks the place where Abraham ascended.

Inside, the chapel is as unadorned as it’s exterior. There’s something like a footprint in a stone upon the floor—the last place one—or both—of these two leaders touched the earth. There’s this ambivalence to all of it—the chapel was built and rebuilt by Crusaders and then Muslims. The only thing that feels agreed is that they would have rather kept their leader grounded, well-contained.

My mother and I left the Chapel of the Ascension just in time to watch a war start down the street. We jumped on a bus of Catholics from Cleveland, and were carried through the screaming crowds and back to our hotel.

Seven people died that afternoon. This is how the Second Intifada started; it hasn’t ended yet.

It seems to me that we need more than second chances.