Halo

The song is 'The Noose' by A Perfect Circle. This video clip includes clips from the movie 'The Shawshank Redemption'. I've potentially violated copyright about three times over, right here, but these pieces of art help me to say what I need to say.



So glad to see you well
Overcome and completely silent now
With heaven's help
You cast your demons out
And not to pull your halo down
Around your neck and tug you off your cloud
But I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends to the dead
To the dead

Recall the deeds as if
They're all someone else's
Atrocious stories
Now you stand reborn before us all
So glad to see you well

And not to pull your halo down
Around your neck and tug you to the ground
But I'm more than just a little curious
How you're planning to go about
Making your amends to the dead
To the dead

With your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping
Your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping down
Your halo slipping down [repeated]

Your halo slipping down to choke you now.


'The Noose' by A Perfect Circle.


In the prayers after the consecration in the Canon of the Roman Mass, there is an invocation of the saints. At the beginning of this prayer, there are three words that are enunciated quite clearly in Latin, amongst all the otherwise whispered prayers. At the same time as saying them, the priest strikes his chest in an act of contrition: 'Nobis quoque peccatoribus', 'to us sinners'. Acknowledging that we are far removed from God, we ask for a 'part and fellowship' in the lives of the saints (and almost half of them are women, so perhaps it's 'part and ladyship', too).


In a postmodern, post-linear world, permitting that a priest label us as 'sinners', and being reminded through the Tridentine liturgy over and over again how sinful and sorrowful and broken we are seems about as attractive a proposition as dragging your knuckles over a cheese grater.


So, there is that. 


What does this have to do with the song 'The Noose'? I hear you cry. The funny thing is, that I'm more accountable, myself, to this song than I have ever been to a priest in a confessional, or to a weighty feeling of besmirched transgression prior to communion in a Mass.


This song, to me, speaks to one of my favourite St Teresa of Avila paraphrases - 'be stern with yourself, but kind to everybody else'. This song talks to the part of myself that wants to see myself in the most angelic light possible, in all times at all places, renewed, immutable, perfected. In lore, angels have an awareness that extend far beyond our mere human capacity to see and know. This song talks to the part of me that has an inkling of that 'eternity', and this song creates a space where I don't get away with not confronting the limitless harm that all of us, each of us, but definitely I at a minimum have a potential to, and at worst could deliberately inflict upon, the sentient beings that are around us.


By virtue of this song, I'm forced to a place of honesty that asks that I walk each step acknowledging, as much as I can, the harm that I might have caused to another person. Any other person. This song demands that I make amends for the wrongs I have wittingly and unwittingly committed, to other people, fully knowing that, once the acts are committed, they are, in a sense, 'dead'. There is no going backwards, just onwards.




Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis tuis, de multitudine miserationum tuarum sperantibus, partem aliquam, et societatem donare digneris, cum tuis sanctis Apostolis et Martyribus: cum Joanne, Stephano, Matthia, Barnaba, Ignatio, Alexandro, Marcellino, Petro, Felicitate, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnete, Caecilia, Anastasia, et omnibus Sanctis tuis: intra quorum nos consortium, non aeistimator meriti, sed veniae, quaesumus, largitor admitte.




To us also, Thy sinful servants, confiding in the multitude of Thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant us some part and fellowship with Thy holy apostles and martyrs; with John, Stephen, Mathias, Barnabas, Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecily, Anastasia, and with all Thy Saints, into whose company we beseech Thee to admit us, not weighing our merits, but pardoning our differences.




Good grief. Just when I think I'm past the need for God enunciations.