God's Acre, again

By the time Palm Sunday comes around, Kim and I usually have a serious decision to make: Are we going to the Moravian Easter Sunrise Service at Old Salem this year?

Although we have a week to think about it, it usually turns out to be a game-day decision with several critical considerations involved, such as: What's the weather going to be? And do we really want to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for the half-hour trip to the cemetery? And what do we do about breakfast?

This is important stuff because the Sunrise Service at Old Salem is a big deal, sometimes drawing upwards of 10,000 people from all points on the compass. It's one of the most inspiring services I've ever attended and it's been going on every Easter morning since 1772. That's 254 years. Older than the country.

This service almost always grabs me by my own Moravian roots and shakes me to my core in something of a spiritual cleansing, so our final decision whether or not to go often comes down to how contrite do we feel?

Years ago, we found an equally moving moment. We go to God's Acre the day before the Sunrise Service to watch hundreds of people scrub and clean the flat marble gravestones of their deceased ancestors. It's a neat tradition.

A marker gets ready for Easter.

 Believe it or not, this can be a remarkably contemplative moment, too. At least two small brass bands were on hand to practice yesterday, with one of them in the bell tower of the bordering Archie K. Davis Moravian Archives building, while the other was on the cemetery grounds itself giving response.

We saw one group of about 20 people or so clustering around a marker. A child or two was doing some animated scrubbing, followed by "good job" and then a moment's reflection as a person in the gathering spoke a few words about the departed. Sometimes there was light laughter and sometimes there was quiet reflection as they celebrated the deceased. It was both joyous and solemn all at once. And then they'd move on to another gravestone, another relative.

This seemed to be happening all over God's Acre.

I don't have any family buried here, but I do know a couple of people here and we annually look for their sites. It sometimes takes my breath away when we do find them because there are more than 7,000 people buried in these grounds.

And then I give them my pause. 

Because this is the day before the actual service, and it's likely that we are not going to get up at 4:30 to make the trek over here, I conduct my own service in my mind's eye. I feel the sun breaking through the clouds. I see the people scurrying about. I hear the music as it bounces off the hills.

I am admittedly a lapsed Moravian, but I am deeply grateful for my Moravian upbringing, which I hold on to whenever I can. So I ponder the morning sun, the rolling landscape, the rows of white marble stones and contemplate the Easter message as I become my own pastor to my own soul.