I wanna rock and roll all night.

Saturday night into Sunday morning, Jill and Sam and Adam and I were the cantors for the all-night vigil at church. I only say 'cantors' because that is what Phillip called us at the end of the art show before the vigil when he was introducing us and telling people that they didn't have to stop chatting, but they would need to go up to the third floor if they wanted to keep talking, and then everyone just left anyway. I sort of prefer a label like "people-who-were-there-the-whole-time". But since we did read the hourly prayers, and kept up the all-night straight-through reading of the four gospels, I guess you could say we canted. We did plan some of the specifics at a meeting the previous week. But the overall structure was already there. cantor just seems so official.

I consider it to have been a good time, but I'm not sure exactly why. We read through all four gospels, but I didn't hear even half of that because I was off manning other things, and trying ot keep awake. And I didn't get much prayer done. Even though I had a good night's sleep the previous night, and a nap at about 4:30, I spent most of the evening and the whole night using all my focus to stay awake. Prayer and meditation were not happening. But the point, I think, of an Easter vigil is to try to do what Peter and John and James did not on the night before he died, and simply stay awake with Jesus. That, also, I did not accomplish. I made it all the way to the last hour. But I willed my way all the way there.

There were three watches. Nine to midnight, midnight to three, and three to six. Each watch had an opening prayer, prayers on the hours, and a closing prayer. The third hour of the first two watches, we set aside for silence in the sanctuary. The other two had Chant and the like playing. The ninth hour, or the third, third, we decided to keep up our tradition and play and sing music in the balcony of the sanctuary. Which is where I ran into trouble. Most of the night, the church had been pretty cold. I'm not sure why. But it did help me stay awake. Until the balcony, that is. It was 62 by the thermostat, and Jill had a blanket, so I snuggled up to keep warm. And zonked out.

Now, I had another nap between the vigil ending at six and the first service at seven. But I was still tired a good portion of the day. And kind of irritable. Which got me thinking about Jesus, how that whole last day you read about, or see movies about, the whole of the Passion movie, for example, Jesus is going on zero sleep form the night before. All his measured answers and presence of mind still somehow come out of a sleep deprived guy. Which I find impressive. Guy doesn't sleep, gets beaten within an inch of his life, and still, when is asked by the governor if he's leading an insurrection against Rome, gets the governor to start questioning the nature of truth.

See, I don't operate well when I'm tired. I can do things I really like a lot, reading or playing a video game, for example. Entertaining things that occupy my whole mind, but don't stretch it. But even while I was reading the last half of Mark and the beginning of John at the vigil, I started getting a little swimmy. I just have a hard time focusing on anything substantive when my lids are slightly heavy, let alone when I haven't slept all night. I don't get how other people can do it. I just want to curl up and sleep. I can imagine Pilate saying, "Are you the King of Jews?" and Jesus being like, "Can I take a 20 minute nap first? I think I'd answer better." That'd be me in his shoes. Which is just another good reason in a long line of good reasons that I would not make a good messiah. Lack of turning water to wine skills is another.

But, oh, have I tried. When I become an x-man, my mutant power will totally be alchemy. Just you wait.

LINK OF THE DAY:
For those of you who somehow missed this, and are fans of the rickroll, here's the man himself discussing it: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/03/rick-astley-kin.html.

And here's a much, much longer version with 3d charts and a monkey interpreting into sign language: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0