On Keeping Rituals Anyway…

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Ash Wednesday, community, dust, God, journey, Lent, normalcy, pandemic, ritual, together

Photo credit: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2019/03/06/ash-wednesday-2019-wearing-ashes-marks-beginning-lent/3064920002/

Today is Ash Wednesday.  It is the day we gather to kick off the beginning of Lent.  The main marker of this day are the ashes rubbed on our foreheads in the shape of a cross.  This ritual action is so powerful that churches typically offer multiple services in their buildings and they hang out in train stations, street corners, or parking lots so that people can grab their ashes on the go. 

But this year Ash Wednesday is happening in a surreal setting.  Reminding us we are dust and to dust we shall return seems a little superfluous when death is all around us from this pandemic.  Beginning a season of fasting seems like overkill when we have been doing nothing but fasting for eleven months – fasting from a way of life we once knew.  Asking us to give us something for Lent seems tone deaf when we have been giving up things for almost a year.  And with large communities having lost power for several days, churches still on lock down, and best practices prohibiting us from actually touching ashes to others’ foreheads, the whole idea of this day seems like too much.

So why are we even bothering with Ash Wednesday this year?  A couple of reasons.  One of the base reasons is we need to keep the rituals of life to help us feel some semblance of normalcy – some reminder of the things that have been meaning-giving in our lives.  Two, we need reminders that God is present in the midst of all this mayhem.  Some of us have never felt God’s absence, some of us have felt the abandonment of God in this time, and some of us have just felt so depleted that God feels distant – not absent, but also not vividly present. 

I don’t know how you are holding up this Ash Wednesday.  I don’t know where you are on your journey with God these days.  But what I do know is that the church is here to walk with you, comfort you, and create space for wherever you are on the journey – whether driving through,  watching online, or catching up by email, phone, or text.  We are in this together.    

On Rituals, Church, and Candy…

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children, church, community, connection, creativity, grace, Halloween, incarnational, innocence, Jesus, joy, neighbor, normalcy, pandemic, ritual, safety, trick-or-treat

Photo Credit: https://www.hauntedwisconsin.com/things-to-do/kids-family/trick-or-treat/

Last weekend, I took my younger daughter trick-or-treating.  We spent a long time as parents debating whether we should take our children.  We read scientific articles, talked to other parents, and spent time in long conversations.  Ultimately, we decided to go ahead, making sure we donned our masks, only traveled as a family, and sanitized our hands frequently between houses.  We also talked to our child about how although she may want to greet friends with warm hugs, that night was a night for verbal greetings instead of physical.  Our child did not argue with the restrictions and was simply happy to be going at all.

We embarked at the designated time not knowing what to expect – whether other families with children would be out safely, whether homeowners would respect social distancing and mask wearing, or whether the entire evening would need to be abandoned.  Much to my surprise, the evening went better than I could have hoped.  The number of trick-or-treaters was cut in half, and people mostly respected safe distancing.  Homes distributing candy were also at about fifty percent, and many of those who distributed exhibited tons of creativity:  from baskets of candy lowered from outdoor balconies, to candy “kabobs” planted in yards, to zipline delivery mechanisms, to clotheslines of candy. Many homeowners bagged candy to reduce touching and many seemed to have read the best practices about how to hand out candy.  I was blown away by our neighbors’ thoughtfulness, creativity, and grace.

But what struck me the most was a truth emerging from the whole evening.  If you had asked me or any of my neighbors before Halloween why we were participating in the ritual of trick-or-treating, we probably all would have said we were doing it for the kids:  to give them some sort of normalcy in this crazy, abnormal time.  But as I tucked my child in that night, and thought about all our experiences, I realized a deeper truth.  I think all of us adults participated in the ritual not just because the children needed it; we participated because we needed it.  We needed just one thing to be semi-normal in this super stressful, topsy-turvy world.  And we took our precautions and stretched our creativity, but we participated in a ritual that reminded us of joy, innocence, and community.

In many ways, that is what we are trying to do every week in churches too.  The very essence of Church is incarnational – from how we gather (in large groups), how we worship (using our all our senses, including touch), how we participate in ritual (often kneeling shoulder to shoulder, receiving communion from common dishes, and laying on of hands), to how we interact (from children’s programming and play to Coffee Hours).  With this pandemic, our incarnational essence just is not possible in the same way.  And so, we are worshiping online, we are offering socially distant worship services, and we are gathering on Zoom for pretty much everything – from formation, to fellowship, to learning, and even play.  I know Church right now is not the same, but if Halloween offers any lessons, perhaps it is that participating in the ritual – even an amended and altered ritual – is important for our spiritual, emotional, and physical health.  If you have taken a break from the ritual of Church because it just is not the same (and you are right, it is not), please know that Hickory Neck is here to help you reclaim some of that ritual.  It may be awkward or push your technological abilities.  But I promise, even those unusual connections might just offer the ritual you need to stay healthy and whole!

On Thanksgiving and Imperfection…

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God, gratitude, imperfect, love, messy, perfect, ritual, shadow, sinner, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day

Photo credit:  https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/collections/thanksgiving/

The last two weeks have been marked with rituals of thanksgiving:  a community ecumenical Thanksgiving service at the local Roman Catholic Church, Holy Eucharist on Thanksgiving Day at Hickory Neck, dinner and visiting with my dad, and, today, offering the benediction at the 400^th anniversary of the first official English Thanksgiving in North America.  The rituals have all been tremendous blessings and ways to center and ground life in gratitude, a practice that can sometimes fall to the wayside in the busyness of life.

However, what has struck me about this season of gratitude is how imperfect it has been.  Often when we think of Thanksgiving Day, we immediately picture Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of the perfect meal.  But as I checked in with people and as I watched those around me, I realized nothing about this season of thanksgiving has been perfect.  I had parishioners who just welcomed a baby a few days before Thanksgiving Day and had resigned themselves to having Chinese so that no one would have to cook or stress about taking the newborn out.  I heard stories of family drama over the menu for the day.  My own family was coming off a few hospitalizations so resigned ourselves to dinner out – which then got foiled by a two-hour wait, with a wait staff that looked like they wanted to be home with their own families.  The music and collaboration of clergy was beautiful last week, but we hold in tension our denominational differences.  Even the anniversary celebration today is consciously honoring the ways in which the histories of American Indians, African-Americans, and English-Americans bring a shadow over our celebration.

As I have been pondering this imperfection, this disconnect between our ideal of perfected thanksgiving rituals and the reality of the messiness of life, I have actually found deep spiritual comfort.  Nothing about our lives is perfect.  We are all sinners, trying to be better versions of ourselves.  Even our offering of thanksgiving is imperfect.  But the love of God is perfect.  God sees our messiness and loves us anyway.  God sees the ways we hurt each other, the ways we argue, the ways we are rude or unkind, the ways that we cannot always honor our rituals, and God loves us anyway.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if God doesn’t prefer our imperfection, for in confessing our imperfection, we are fully honest, fully vulnerable, and fully trusting of God.  We bring our real selves to God, and it is there that we give the most heartfelt thanksgiving.  We feel, know, and experience God most powerfully in those moments of imperfection.

This week, I invite you to continue your practice of gratitude with God and one another.  In our thanksgiving, we are not just thanking one another for appearance’s sake, but we are thanking one another in fullness, in love, and in generosity.  Use this week to find people to thank – for the big things and the very tiny things.  My guess is we may all start working toward the perfection of God’s love with each act of thanksgiving.

On Liturgy, Love, and the Lord…

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communion, community, Episcopal Church, Eucharist, God, instructed, liturgy, longing, mental, mystery, physical, ritual, spiritual, welcome, wonder

Photo credit:  Hickory Neck Episcopal Church; reuse with permission only.

This past Sunday we celebrated an “Instructed Eucharist,” a worship service in the Episcopal Church narrated to explain how and why we do the things we do in Church.  Though Instructed Eucharists are pretty common in the Episcopal Church, I had never led one myself, and I found I was pretty nervous about how it would go.  I worried the narrative pieces would feel too long and people would start to lose attention.  I worried the worship would feel too disjointed by narration to feel like worship.  I worried the teaching portion would not be particularly meaningful for those gathered.

As in most things, my worries were unfounded.  Many of those gathered shared that the narrative did not make the service too long.  In fact, they were surprised at how seamlessly the narrative flowed, and how engaging the experience was.  Several of those gathered were touched by the parts that are always touching – scripture, music, preaching, the peace, communion, and the dismissal.  And many of those gathered, of all ages, and of all spiritual backgrounds, shared not only did they love the service, but they also learned many new things.

What caught my attention about the feedback was not simply that people liked the experience.  What caught my attention about the feedback was people were excited about worship.  Having learned something about the weekly ritual of worship allowed our worship to shift from the physical (the habits of bowing, kneeling, standing, singing, eating, greeting) to the mental (understanding the theology, history, and spirituality of our worship) to the spiritual (the opening of our bodies and minds creating deeper connection with God).  That kind of excitement is at the heart of what drew most Episcopalians to the Episcopal Church – a ritual that somehow spoke to something deep inside them, and of which they wanted more.  Sometimes that longing could be easily described, but sometimes that longing was too mysterious to capture in words.

If you had that experience this past Sunday, or if you have ever been touched by that mysterious sense of God in the worship within the Episcopal Church, I invite you to share that sense of wonder with someone today.  You may share the first moment you stepped into an Episcopal Church, or a lifetime of practice, or a simple Instructed Eucharist.  Share the wonder and beauty with someone else, and invite them into the same experience that has enlivened your spiritual journey.  And if you have never had that experience in a church before, know you are welcome to join us at Hickory Neck – a place where you can weekly come and participate – whether physically, mentally, or spiritually – in something bigger than yourself, but in something that makes you feel more grounded in yourself – something that allows you to find God within, already there waiting for you, affirmed in the community around you.  You are welcome here.

On Baseball, Community, and Church…

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baseball, church, community, disciple, God, Good News, Little League, Lord, love, meaning, ritual, serve, support

Photo credit:  newprovidencepal.org/baseball/

This summer we have had the joy of supporting both a friend’s and a parishioner’s little league baseball teams.  Not having boys myself, it has been a long time since I watched a little league game.  In fact, after the first game we saw, I shared with my husband that I could not imagine giving up so much family time for one member’s extracurricular interest.  He understood my hesitation, but invited me to look around.  You see, with all those mornings, afternoons, and evenings at the baseball field; with the ritual of packing chairs, canopies, and ice chests; and with the repeated gathering of parents and siblings, slowly, slowly a community is formed.  Parents learn about each other’s lives, siblings convert boredom into adventures, and guests are quickly made to feel welcome with a shared chair, beverage, or joke.

What those teams, especially travelling teams, have done is create a community.  They have created a group of people who know each other’s stories, who share wins and losses together, and who slowly learn to talk more than just baseball – but life!  They have created a community where kids do not just have one set of parents – they have a whole community of moms, dads, and siblings.  They have created a community that revolves around ritual, memory-making, and maybe even meaning-making.  In many ways, those teams have created something similar to what Church creates.  Church too creates a multigenerational community – where every elder is a grandma, and every adult can parent children.  Church too creates a community where wins and losses are shared together, where stories are known, and companionship is created.  Church too revolves around ritual, memory-making, and meaning-making.

Church creates community, but uses that creation for a different purpose.  The community of Church nurtures, forms, offers comfort, and creates community, but almost as a side-benefit to the main work we do.  Our purpose is to shape disciples for sharing and living the Good News of God in Christ.  So, while we are loved and supported in the community, we are loved and supported so that we can go out into the world to love and support others.  While we share stories, wins, and loses, we also go out to listen to others’ stories, naming where we see God acting in their lives.  While we participate in ritual, making memories and meaning, that same ritual sends us out to love and serve the Lord in the world.  We may come for the community Church creates.  But we stay because that community demands we be much more.

Today I am grateful for our many communities.  In fact, I think we all need more than just Church communities to keep us grounded in the world God created.  But if you haven’t been to church in a while, I invite you to give it a try.  You may find even more than you were looking for!