SOUL FOOD:

A couple of weeks after my father died, an acquaintance tried to ease my grief by assuring me that, as time went by, I would not miss him as terribly.

I appreciated the impulse of kindness though I was certain she was wrong.

I remembered the years when as a child I was separated from my father. As a U.S. Marine, he sometimes had to live overseas while my sister and I lived with my mother and grandmother in Alabama.

Every night before going to bed, we’d draw a big, red crayon X through the day on a calendar. Every day he was gone, I missed my father more, not less. How would it be different, I wondered, to be separated from him by death?

It hasn’t been.

On the Friday before Father’s Day last month, as I drove to where my father is buried at the Riverside National Cemetery, I missed him more than ever. I wept at his grave, but I did not weep without hope.

I’m not ticking off the days with big, red Xs, but I know this separation in time will also come to an end. He will not return to me but I will go to him.

At church Sunday morning, I remembered my father on the 10th anniversary of his death with the Eastern Orthodox service called the Trisagion. The whole congregation participates in its prayers.

We pray for the living: “All holy-Trinity, have mercy on us. Lord, cleanse us from our sins. Master, pardon our iniquities. Holy God, visit and heal our infirmities for thy Name’s sake.”

And we pray, likewise, for the departed.

“O God of spirits and of all flesh, who has trampled down Death, and made powerless the Devil, and given life to the world … give rest to the soul of Thy departed servant, in a place of brightness … whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled away. Pardon every sin which he hath committed, whether by word, or deed or thought.”

The morning before I had made Kolyva, a dish of sweetened wheat. I mixed boiled wheat berries with chopped nuts, seeds, golden raisins, ground cinnamon and cloves. On a tray, I shaped the cooled mixture to resemble the mound of a grave. I blanketed it with smooth, white powdered sugar. Across its surface, I fashioned a cross from white Jordan almonds.

In the church, flanked by a framed photograph of my father, the Kolyva was blessed.

“The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Son of God’s] voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment,” Jesus said, according to the Gospel of John.

He compared the resurrection to come to the sowing of wheat. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

The wheat in the Kolyva represents resurrection — its sweetness, the resurrection not to judgment but to life. It symbolizes the Trisagion prayers, after which it is distributed among the congregation.

Scripture and context

Some people tell me it’s unchristian to pray for the dead. But as Father Michael Reagan, a priest at my church, points out, the church has always believed in the importance of prayers to and for its departed.

Roman catacombs evidence first century inscriptions that indicate Christians both prayed for their dead and asked the departed to pray for them. Prayers for the departed, it is believed, preserve and strengthen the unity of the Church on earth and the Church in heaven.

“In my opinion,” Father Michael said, “the idea that we should not pray for the departed is one that is not informed by Christian understanding, but by secular disbelief. It is precisely the Christian revelation that gives such prayers their fullest and most beautiful purpose and meaning.”

But if you don’t know the Hebrew or Christian scriptures, what can you make of what Father Michael says?

If you’ve never read the Hebrew or Christian scriptures, you’re likely to have a tough time getting the drift of some major English authors and poets, never mind an Eastern Orthodox priest.

Which is why I don’t understand the Huntington Beach Union High School District being so indifferent, if not plain opposed, to allowing a “Bible as literature” course into our city’s high schools.

From Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare to William Faulkner to Bob Dylan to Anne Lamott, you cannot fully appreciate their works if you’re not conversant with Judeo-Christian scripture.

I’d argue it’s hard to have a respectable grasp of American history, too, without first having a fair-to-middling grasp of scripture. The HBO mini-series on John Adams gives evidence of that.

Believe in the Bible, or think it’s a crock; it’s part of our cultural DNA. We need to keep our knowledge of it alive.

At least one group of students has learned about Islam in our middle schools. Yet the idea of offering an elective on the Bible as literature to high school students supposedly strikes the fear of lawsuits in the hearts of school board members.

Using the Bible Literacy Project’s textbook, “The Bible and Its Influence,” or other texts, courses are successfully being offered elsewhere in California.

There’s no good reason a course shouldn’t be offered here. I plan to be at the school board’s July 22 meeting, which may decide this issue. If you think it’s important, you might want to be there, too.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.