Launching Into Lent

I’m a hesitant observer of Lent. Nevertheless, I’m on board for the turbulent journey

Obediently,

we saunter into

Ash Wednesday's service.

Kneeling,

we are marked--

as much a sign of

obligation as mild

intention.

Lent launches

as we straggle up

the gangplank.

Though winded,

we're on board--

a bit bewildered about

where this journey ends,

somewhat unsure of

the purpose of this

passage.

When inspiration flags,

discipline and duty

carry us.

Where vision is obscured,

the immediate horizon a fog,

soundings resonate

direction.

Others seem more

certain of this voyage--

sails are trimmed and

crew busy themselves.

But we aren't sure

whether we should

settle in to rest

or keep watch

at the bow.

We're asked to

give up something--

to lighten the load?

Have we not already

given up home and land

for this untethered vessel

churning through

inhospitable seas

to an unheard of

location?

After a few days at sea

we notice atop the mast

flies a flag--are those

cross bones?

What were we thinking

when we bought the ticket

marked "Destination Port:

Calvary"?

John Franklin Hay 
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 
www.twitter.com/indybikehiker 
indybikehiker@gmail.com

Lent, Day 1: Ash Wednesday

By and for expatriates, recovering _______ (insert your church/faith upbringing here), and/or hopeful sojourners.

Ten steps to begin Lent:

1. Mark or be marked with ashes (likely virtual or self-applied this year). Dirt or grease also work.

2. Accept that it can seem a bit silly or weird (EVERY faith AND secular tradition has its nearly inexplicably weird rituals).

3. Explore what this whole ashes thing means. Google thinks it knows.

4. Recognize that there are myriad interpretations of ashes on the forehead. Question obvious and trite meanings. 

5. Refuse to accept others’ interpretations for yourself. What’s it mean for you?

6. Dare to let this ash marking, understood or not, begin a 40-day journey of life and faith discovery—with or without a fast/denial. 

7. Consider some kind of fast or denial for 40 days—but don’t make it superficial. Consider, instead, a positive action (a fast from complacency, inaction, sidelining).

8. Ask yourself: what might this mean for me, for the community, for the world—here and now?

9. Practice something each day for 40 days: A walk, a run, a meditation time, an act of service or compassion, a conversation, a group meeting, an art project, a virtual heart-expanding encounter, etc., that requires a bit of discipline. If you start late, just start and try to finish.

10. Track via journaling, art making, contemplation, conversation, etc. what you experience. Listen to your life. Note the journey.

Rx for Fear-based Religious and Political Paranoia

There is a better response by people of faith to political change than playing a victim being denied basic rights.

I hear what political right-wingers and evangelicals foment in fear of losing liberties. I’ve endured this paranoid hype since I was young preacher’s kid. But, honestly, as an ordained minister working over 35 years in the church and community, I have not had a single right or expression of faith challenged or diminished—not one.

On the other hand, I have repeatedly witnessed right-wingers and evangelicals impugn and deny rights to my LGBTQ neighbors, use privilege to deny equity and equal justice, ignore or fuel racism, demean immigrants, blame poor neighbors for their poverty, and align themselves with a godless ideology based on greed and exploitation.

Right-wing and evangelical paranoia and conspiracy theories are based on false fears and a choice to see oneself and one’s religion as a victim whenever individuals or groups arrogantly try to breach the separation of church and state written into the US Constitution.

The Constitutional separation of church and state has been extremely breached during the Trump years. Both faith and government of, by, and for the people is diminished because of the power grabbing by some evangelical groups. Ultimately, they have just been used by an authoritarian tyrant.

Reestablishing a Constitutional separation of church and state after four years of mutual exploitation between Trump and evangelicals may feel, by comparison, like a rollback or denial of rights to them, but it is merely restoring basic separation for the common good of all US Citizens and our neighbors.

Perhaps right-wingers and evangelicals disgruntled because their candidate legitimately lost the election and lashing out with paranoid notions might consider a different response—a genuinely faith-based response. Try this: there is no law against loving one’s neighbor as oneself. This is, in fact, the fulfillment of faith’s highest aspirations and most basic daily opportunity.

The Adequate Gift

These four stories help me get over gift anxiety 

GIFT ANXIETY  What shall I give?  Will it be enough?  Will it be right?  Will it be what my loved ones desire?  Will they be pleased?  Such thoughts go through my mind as I think about gift-giving.  I scroll through online items and walk the aisles of stores with questions circling.  You do this, too?  We're not alone.  

Some of my favorite imaginative Christmas stories and songs revolve around gift anxiety--and its resolution.  Leaving alone the more perplexing story woven in the Twelve Days of Christmas song, you may know the following stories quite well.  I recall them here and set them in context of this question: what is an adequate gift?

LITTLE DRUMMER  The most popular of the stories I have in mind is embedded in the song, "The Little Drummer Boy."  It sings first-person of a little boy who has nothing he thinks is fit to bring to the baby who is born to be the King.  "I have no gift to bring," he sighs.  He decides—innocently, naively, hopefully—to offer the only thing he has or can do: he will play his drum the very best he can for Jesus.  In the song, the baby Jesus smiles at him as he plays.  The gift is adequate.

LITTLEST ANGEL  "The Littlest Angel" is a familiar childhood story about a troublesome little angel who, learning that God's Son is to be born on earth, manages to hide away such common things as a butterfly, a bird’s egg, stones, his favorite dog’s collar in a rough-hewn box--things that he loved as a little boy on earth—to offer the Christ child.  His items, however, pale grossly in comparison to the other angels' magnificent, shining gifts.  He feels humiliated and runs to hide.  But, to his surprise, his choices are things the little boy Jesus relates to and loves.  As the Christ child looks approvingly upon his gift, it rises and transforms to become the star above the stable, giving light to all.

GIFT OF THE OF MAGI  "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry is the touching story of a young couple with very limited resources trying to offer each other a significant gift at Christmas.  Unbeknown to each other, they sacrifice the best they have for the other's best. She sells her beautiful long hair so she can purchase a golden chain for her lover's valuable watch. He, in turn, pawns his cherished timepiece to buy a golden comb for her beautiful hair.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER  Christina Rossetti’s carol "In the Bleak Midwinter" concludes with a verse that compellingly underscores the only adequate gift we really bring is the gift of our heart: “What can I give Him, Poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what I can I give Him--Give my heart.”

GIFTS WE RECEIVE  Christmas is really not about what you can give to Jesus or to others. It is about what God has given to us. All our gift giving is a simply response to and reflection of this gift. Whatever it is you choose to give to others, let it be joyfully and from a grace-gifted heart.

Sleepwalking Advent

Shifting gears into Advent may take some time...but don't lollygag too long!

Advent begins
in a fog of unreadiness,
as if by dull surprise
or in a twilight zone,
we groggily hang the greens.

Hardly with awareness
much less anticipation
good people sleepwalk
through the prophecies
and Annunciation.

We may finally stir
by the time children sing
“Away in a Manger”
the Sunday before Christmas,
their raised voices spark
a light in our slumbering souls.

Is it only children and prophets
who grasp the urgency,
sense the passion;
whose hearts are rended
and readied by the
promise of Light shining
in the darkness?

Is it only to them that Advent
becomes no mere repetition
of myth-laden past events,
but days of embracing
the living Mystery,
the ground of all hope?

By God’s mercy and grace
children and prophets are
only the first to hear,
the first to recognize,
to proclaim that
it is, indeed, Mystery.

The Light ever dawns,
beaming its rays into the
eyes of the groggiest saints,
the hardest sleeper
among us.

Only those who refuse to rise
amid many urgent shakings
and light flooding their beds
sleep through the
Incarnation.

“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

COVID-19 and Star Wars

At the risk of sounding trite, I’ve been thinking today of the Star Wars saga (It WAS May the 4th earlier this week, right?) in relationship to the pandemic and efforts to grapple with it, limit its deadly impact, wipe it out, and return to sanity and the good life.

I think of long, dark phases of the epic Star Wars episodes that I’ve been viewing since I was 18 years old. We know this story. The Empire/dark side repeatedly asserts deadly, overwhelming, seemingly irresistible grips. Rebel leaders are frequently deeply conflicted and divided about how best to address the Empire (even the wise Jedi counsel gets deceived).

There were no guarantees for a way out—neither are there now. Just grit and guts and loss and grief and intelligence and ingenuity and perseverance and hope and love and the force. And always, of course, the refusal to let anger and fear control.

We are in for a long haul with many twists and turns. Hang on, it’s likely to get worse. This appears to a primal, global test of our lifetimes. There are no prepared plot lines. We are writing the script with our lives every day. It strains and exposes all our securities and insecurities, strengths and weaknesses, capacities and vulnerabilities, solidarities and divisions. There is no way out—only through. Together.

We already know many first-response, frontline heroes are tending our wounded and searching for a vaccine. We know and salute essential workers who are holding our fragile systems together with their lives on the line—voluntarily and involuntarily.

All of us, in our own ways, are called upon to make a difference—even if it is, for now, staying at home, social distancing, masking, sanitizing, checking up on neighbors, supporting causes, and sharing information and inspiration. Let’s do what we can with what we’ve been given.

And may...

Silent Saturday

Maybe the best thing we could do on this in-between day is just be silent

I don’t know what to do with the Saturday before Easter.

Not even sure what to call it.

Holy Saturday? Dark Saturday?

Or, should I take a more post-resurrection approach:

Joyous Saturday or Saturday of the Light (as the Copts)?

How about Silent Saturday?

It’s this odd day between Good Friday and Easter.

We tend to put all our eggs in those two baskets,
engaging in somber services on Good Friday and
jubilant--even braggadocios--outbursts on Easter.

But this day?

We’ve got nothing.

Maybe that’s how it should be.

Completely wrung out and undone by Friday’s
procession of confusion, denial, pain and death,
and with no realistic hope of anything beyond,
Jesus’ followers scattered--speechless, witless,

utterly alone.

The more silent this day, the better.

What do deniers and deserters have to say, anyway?

People who’ve mistaken his ministry--be quiet.

Those who think hope is based on coercion and might
in Jesus’ name were dead wrong--

and still are.

Mute, especially, thoughts of resurrection.

That wasn't on the radar screen of the dismayed

when the heavy stone was rolled into place.

Don't take comfort in what you think you know.

Don't count your chickens when you

don't have chickens to count.

Wouldn't it help us all to just shut up for a few hours
and let whatever Grace wants to say or do

sink in

or rise up?


Note: 

I wrote this about 10 years ago and revised it a bit early this morning. 

It seems no one ever instructed or informed me about Holy Saturday (even in seminary). It was just a day to get ready for Easter hype—choir rehearsals, egg painting, basket-filling, clothes readying, lilies buying, sermon writing.

There’s not much to say about Holy Saturday as part of the story of what really happened. There is nothing in the Bible. Not much has been written across millennia.

I’ve tried to put my head and heart into one of Jesus’ earnest followers on that day. Who could bear such disappointment, loss, and self guilt/shame? It was over. Done. Defeat. Finis! And they had denied and deserted and scattered.

It seems to me that going there in our minds and hearts personally is perhaps the only—or at least the best—way to awaken to startling, head-spinning reports on the third day. Resurrection was the last thing the first followers could have expected. Maybe in our imagination we would benefit from going there, too.

There will be a day to celebrate. Silent Saturday is not that day.

John Franklin Hay 
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 
www.johnfranklinhay.blogspot.com
www.twitter.com/indybikehiker 
indybikehiker@gmail.com