The Power of Those Smudges

I’m just going to be upfront and say that on Tuesday, I looked up Ash Wednesday on Wikipedia. There. I said it. I mean, I knew that it was the start of Lent. Which is the time before Easter. But between the Baptist church I attended as a child, and the two very low-church Methodist churches I went to as a teenager and Campus Crusade for Christ in college and then the whole leaving the church and then becoming Unitarian Universalist and then staying that but also sort of reentering Christianity, let’s just say that the liturgical calendar wasn’t really a big part of my church life. (Who need the liturgical calendar when you are being RADICAL for JESUS and have, like, four Bible studies to go to every week!?)

And, as Nick Cave says, I don’t believe in an interventionist God, so I won’t say that God somehow pulled me to Ash Wednesday services (or [back to] to Christianity for that matter) but if I did believe those things, that is what I would have said about the services I went to yesterday.

Early this week I was thinking about standing outside of divinity school a few years ago, having missed Ash Wednesday services around campus and seeing everyone with the ashes smudged on their heads and asking my friend Nicole what exactly it was all about and sort of musing that I somehow liked it. And dear Nicole reached up on her head and took some of the ashes from her forehead and put a small faint cross on my head with her ashes, telling me that the priest [she is Catholic] says, “From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return.” We talked some about the time before death and resurrection and praying in the desert and burning leaves from Palm Sunday. But what I remember is this power and this feeling and almost like a little collapse inside of me when she gave me some of her ashes. Like, right there, she could perform something sacramental, and I could be a part of things, and a part of this long history of people smudging and praying and confessing and hoping and it didn’t have to be earth shattering or The Great Return to Christianity or The Great Confession of Sin. It was just me and my friend Nicole who is an amazing minister and this moment or more like a washing over me of this circle of life and death and hope and return and leaving and all of it. It was both a big deal and not a big deal.

So at the last minute yesterday I called the local Disciples Church (our Unitarian Universalist church here does not have Ash Wednesday services) to see when their services were. And amid my sweet little son gobbling on his cookie and trying to read me Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?, I was awash again in this flood. I am not sure what it is a flood of, exactly. Of this idea that we are finite, that there always remains hope, that we can begin again, that we are all hurting, that we are invited into a time of reflection and doing things differently, and that this can shape us, and that God is always present. I love our Unitarian Universalist Church here in our new town, but I miss God. For me, I find God in ashes and bread and wine somehow in a unique way that I sort of feel like I need. Who knows why.

What I like somehow is that there are not Answers to be given on Ash Wednesday. At least not how I have experienced it. We are together. We anticipate the crucifixion. We acknowledge our brokenness. We sit together and confess. We sing. We listen. We leave, marked, together, that we are part of the Church. And, in a day, that fades and we are back to our unmarked selves, trying to love, trying to pray, trying not to eat chocolate or whatever other big but really absolutely small thing we’ve decided to do for Lent and we are just praying and waiting and preparing both for something terrible and tragic, yet knowing that only through that can there be new life. For whatever reason, that makes a lot of sense to me right now.

On Who We Are: Congregations and Beyond, and Beyond

Well good people of the interwebs, Elizabeth’s Little Blog is resurrected! What has drawn me from my slumber, you ask? Two things! The first is the conversation that is going on around Congregations and Beyond, a white paper by the Unitarian Universalist Association President, Rev. Peter Morales. In short, it is asking questions and suggesting we think further about the many people who identify as Unitarian Universalists but don’t take part in congregational life. Here is the conclusion, if you haven’t been following this:

The central conviction driving this proposal is that our core values appeal to far more
 people than are attracted to (or likely to be attracted to) our congregations. We have 
always treated this as a problem to be solved by devising ways to get people to become 
members of our congregations. But the reality of today’s world is that not everyone who
shares our core values will want to become part of a traditional congregation. The fact
 that so many share our values is an enormous opportunity, not a problem. The future
 relevance of our faith may well depend on whether we can create a religious movement
 beyond, as well as within, the parish. I am confident that together we can seize this
historic opportunity for our faith.

I have been working on a very long post in response to this, but instead I’m going to break it up into a couple posts – a series, if you will. And I want to think about this together with the whole “I’m religious but not spiritual” phenomenon that we hear about a lot these days. A few months ago there was quite the craze going on among my minister friends, everyone sharing Spiritual but Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me by Lillian Daniel. Seminarians and ministers especially loved this because I think Rev. Daniel was saying some things that a lot of wish we could say but don’t out of politeness and kindness. I think the gist of her article was not so much to make fun of all spiritual-but-not-religious folks but more a particular brand which is, “Hey Minister Person! You think you know stuff about faith and religion? Well let me tell you what I have actually discerned by watching sunsets and taking walks in the woods and going to meaningful Yoga Retreats while you have been trapped in your stuffy, old, stale Religious Land.” I get this version of things at parties a lot. The whole spiritual-but-not-religious thing fits well with the whole UU-but-not-in-a-congregation thing in the sense that both are raising questions about what it is we are about and what sort of accountability do we/should we have to community and to history? Both, at their best, I think are dealing with how we do things differently so as to meet people’s needs while, at the same time, not falling into some sort of new age-y whatever-you-want la la la land. How do we welcome lots of people who may not fit well with the Way Things Have Always Been Done without letting go of what is important and essential to living our faith out in the world, our communities, and in our own individual lives?

I often speak of our faith as doing the hard work of love and justice. This may not work for everyone, but it makes a lot of sense to me and the Unitarian Universalists congregations that I have been a part of and have served. So in the coming posts, I’ll reflect on a few of the issues involved in Congregations and Beyond, keeping a close eye on how this relates to a similar spritiual-but-not-religious discussion.

In the meantime, a few ways to follow these conversations:

This is a good collection of the conversations taking place on Congregations and Beyond including blog chatter, UU World, Facebook and Twitter, made by Chris Walton of UU World.

This is the Congregations and Beyond Facebook group.

Stay tuned for Part II.