Does It Matter

It’s Ash Wednesday, and these days, people are so busy that they may not take time to attend worship where the impostition of ashes is done.  Or, they may just rush to a noontime community service where there are so many participants leading worship that it’s difficult to pay attention to getting ashes smeared on their faces, which they will immediately wash off in the restroom before dashing back to work, or shopping, or whatever the afternoon holds. Or, they’ll forget altogether it’s Lent until Sunday, when they see a bulletin or hear a mention of it in worship.

Personally, I will be heading for my church’s evening service, where although the crowd will be sparser than Sunday morning, the folks there will lean forward a little more urgently and intentionally to receive the ashes on our foreheads at the appointed time. We’ll be kind of somber as we return to the altar for holy communion. And since it’s the end of the day, there won’t be the need to hide our religiosity with water splashed on our faces or paper towels scrubbing our foreheads quite so quickly after worship.

No, this doesn’t make us holier than anyone else. There’s nothing worse than the false piety that pervades Christian spirituality in some circles in which we show off our ashes. We purposely head for the grocery store or restaurant and hope someone will give us a chance to “witness” about our love for Jesus because they have seen the smeared cross on our face, which we left there to elicit just such a response!

No, humility is the order of the day. It’s hard to be humble when you are busy being holy and Christ-like (but as one of my friends says who doesn’t particularly like Lent, “Jesus never had ashes put on his face, so I’m not, either!” And this guy is one of those silent saints – the best kind – who is deeply kind and faithful but hates to show it off); the more we point to ourselves, the less we follow Christ. And it’s true that there’s nothing particularly Christ-like about ashes: Jesus really didn’t observe Ash Wednesday. It’s for us who seek to follow him, a gift, really.

Humility is tough. We’re supposed to go through Lent without showing off what we are giving up or taking on. On years that I fast once a week, I feel that I have to warn Renae so she won’t cook some elaborate meal and then have me tell her I can’t eat it that night. That can make her feel bad as well as make me seem more pious – something we are also supposed to give up for Lent, a false sense of a holy self.

The stories of the desert saints of early Christianity are full of stories of abbas and ammas departing from their fasting and other observances when guests showed up. The fake holiness of some shows them being critical of an abba who served his guests during the fast – and ate himself rather than show off for his guests – and being reminded that the one who taught self-denial also taught love of neighbor.

One monk told me this: we are always to drop our holy observances if guests (read “anyone”) are around so as not to have our “holiness” or “piety” pointed out in any way. Why Lent is so difficult for modern Christians may be this very thing: our wanting to have people point out how holy we are being.

And that, my Christian friend, is just how to ruin a good Lenten observance: let it be known you’re doing it.

I don’t have to worry too much about anyone thinking I’m holy: I last about two weeks into Lent and my observances go to hell. But I’m praying you’ll do better than me.

But we’ll never know, will we?

“I don’t feel very thankful this year.”

The church member who said that to me many years ago was not saying anything that others hadn’t thought before. The fact that it was said in the context of a Church School class was the most surprising thing: the nodding of heads around the table gave silent agreement to the unspoken thoughts of many classmates. As the pastor/teacher of this class, I tried to understand the frustration offered so generously (why, O why, do people not generously offer us more positive comments?).

Sometimes, we don’t feel very grateful, that’s for sure. It’s not that we are not grateful, but we don’t feel that warm fuzzy vibration in our guts that signals a “real” experience. There is no choking up in our throats, no watering of our eyes, no sense of a memorable moment occurring. Yeah, God, we thank you for our blessings. Yawn. What’s next?

I’m gonna make this as simple as I can: we need to learn to say “thank you.” We need to practice it regularly, even when we don’t feel all gooey inside about gratitude. We need to do it. It points to the one truth of the universe for all of us: none of us does this whole life thing alone. We are dependents, every one of us. The language of gratitude is the language of recognizing this deep truth. Gratitude, then, is (as Brother David Steidl-Rast says) “waking up” to the deepest reality of our existence.

Once long ago, I asked a group of ten-year-olds in Church School whether or not God still spoke to us. One little mystic popped up and answered,”God does, but we just don’t recognize God’s language.” When I asked what she meant, she continued, “If we spent lots of time with God, we would eventually learn how God is, what God’s voice sounds like, and we would learn to speak the language God uses.”

Dumbfounded, I left the class and made a couple of notes and walked into worship and preached her sermon.

I think gratitude is like that. People who are never intentionally and regularly grateful cannot on one day of the year suddenly say a meaningful “Thank you” to whatever source of meaning is in their lives. Others, who are mindful of this generous universe we sometimes call “God,” know how interdependent we are with everything around us, and they find “Thank you” to be the only authentic response to breathing each moment of their lives.

So, this year, I’m gonna try something different: I want to wake up to “Thank you.” There’s going to be a note placed somewhere I’ll see it to remind me (probably on my bathroom mirror). I’m going to practice saying “Thank you” to what the old hymn calls this “bounteous God.” With heart, and head, and voice.

Maybe with practice, I’ll be able to speak a language of gratitude and be able to recognize what it is to be a grateful. And in being more grateful, I’ll be more aware of the immensity of this gift we call “life.”

Then, maybe I’ll practice learning the rest of the languages of God.

The news today is full of reports of politicians calling for a revamping of Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act, to be exact – did anyone refer to the Iraq war as Bushwar?). The first measurements of how it is working are being published, and as usual, politicians are jumping the gun to make immediate changes to a “bad” law.

This got me thinking about the culture of impatience that we have created. We never give anything time to work. Go on a diet, and if you don’t lost 10 pounds in the first two weeks (well, more like the first two minutes), the diet is a failure. Start an exercise program that doesn’t produce muscles right away, well, that’s all for that! A pain reliever had better “go to work” in minutes or it’s time for something different. Let a new television show fail to pick up an audience in the first two weeks it’s aired and it disappears forever, even before those few who liked it have gotten to know the characters. New movies get the same treatment, going to DVD or blu-ray after a couple of weeks of only making a few million dollars.

It never hurts us to stop and take stock of reality: and the reality of life is that change can be glacially slow. A rock can be worn down by little drops of water over thousands of years. It can also be broken apart in a matter of decades by tree roots. It has taken decades for the western lifestyle to degrade the environment to what has become catastrophic: incredibly immense storms rage across the planet, and no one seems to be able to put two and two together to equal anything more than “Duh, we don’t understand.” And since the changes that are being made will take years to make an impact, those against curbing our wasteful way of life will say, “Look, we did that, and nothing happened.” The rest of us will say, “Yep, you’re right,” and get back to business as usual.

Patience: God seems to have much more of it than we do. If we were in charge, hell would be full of the unrepentant, wrath would be regular and instantaneous, and there wouldn’t be anything left of creation from our constant rage at the evildoers failing to change.

I really wonder what the Affordable Care Act will be like in a couple of years, after everyone has seen whether it is going to help people as promised. That was the point, wasn’t it? Isn’t this supposed to help those who have not been able to get medical insurance now be able to afford it and maybe help their quality of life? I sure hope and pray we give it a chance to work. We really won’t know anything about its success until it begins to be used.

Like my diet book says: it took you years to get the weight on, it’s going to take some time to get it off. BE PATIENT!

I wish we’d all just be more patient. And I wish it would happen NOW!

Does it Matter?

Of course, you might guess that I think it does. Whatever “it” turns out to be!

Back in my college years many decades ago, I read a book by Alan Watts titled, Does it Matter? Watts put together essays on all sorts of things, and the book grabbed me. He talked about clothing. Food. Money. Watts had an opinion about it all and didn’t mind sharing.

Watts’ thinking is not my thinking, but he influenced me to see that sometimes, the tiny things are huge and not to be ignored. We always talk about seeing the “Big Picture,” but the “Big Picture” is often used as a smokescreen so that we won’t see how much the “Little Picture” influences the world around us.

So many things matter more than we realize. So many things that we are led to believe are important, aren’t. For example, we live in a culture where sports are important. We pay millions to our professional athletes. We pay them to play games for us. They play. Games. Does it matter, these games? Of course not.

On the other hand, we pass by the poor constantly. They are everywhere around us. Some of us are them. Does it matter that we apparently don’t care? Of course it does.

So, I’ll be talking about what matters to me, and hoping that some of it will matter to those of you who stop here to read what I’ve written.  You’ll be in a hurry to something that might matter, so I’ll try to be brief.

Sad to say, brevity matters. But of course, it doesn’t, really.