With the words 'Hail in the name of the earth, in the love of the sun, in communion of the holy oxygen. Amen' Antjie Krog opens her poem Broze Aarde. "Does Antije Krog mean this blasphemously?" wondered Hans Alma in introduction to the performance of the mass on 15 April at the Amsterdam-Slotervaart Apostolic Society building. "Or does it help us arrive at a view of God and humanity that makes us better able to care for our planet?"
Antjie Krog's poem Broze Aarde is, Hans Alma argued, exactly like the earth it honours: unruly, raw, shocking and clean. In the performance of the mass, dance, song, word and smell expressed that unruly and wonderful earth. We moved with her, sang her praises, confessed our guilt, sought forgiveness, and sought an image of man and God that enables us to embrace life and to care for each other and for that beautiful fragile earth.
At times vulnerable and hopeful, at other times desperate and furious, passages were recited, reflections were given, and our senses were stirred by song, dance and fragrance. From Introitus & Miserere nobis and Hosannas, through Credo and Gloria and Sanctus and Dies irae to Agni terrae to Lux aeterna. From light, to dark and back again. To the eternal light, where, in Ruard Ganzevoort's words, our image of man and God is perhaps best captured in a form of cosmic modesty. Where our place on this earth cannot be taken for granted. And the eternal light is not the opposite of temporality, unreality and darkness and twilight, but rather its embrace: "The embrace of the elusive and vulnerable light, of the elusive and vulnerable eternity. Not because they are something outside ourselves and far away, but precisely because they are so close like the unfelt air around our skin, like the ground under your feet that can only be there because it is there and for no more reason than that. The embrace that uncertainty itself is certainty, that temporality is the eternal, and dusk is light...'
And so we closed Mass in cosmic humility. With a deep yearning for light that never becomes certainty. And caring for that wonderful, fragile earth.