Weekly Lenten Devotional Services, starting Ash Wednesday at 6:30 - in the Evenson Chapel
Each week, our clergy, Matthew Cockrum and Fred Wooden, will conduct an experiential and experimental service in the chancel of the Evenson Chapel. This half hour devotional will take up the challenge of Lent to explore the gray and shadowed areas of life as part of our spiritual path.
Using the ancient psalms as a touchstone, poems that speak of anger, sorrow, fear, despair, we will use a variety of ways to engage these parts of our lives through song, silence, motion, stillness, ritual, reading. What you take from the service is yours to find and yours to keep.
Visitors or member, stranger or friend, whatever your age or circumstance, you are invited and welcome to take part. Make Lent a season of spiritual attention and intention, regardless of your particular beliefs.
This service will end in time for evening classes or activities.
March 12
Of course, being away for a while means the work piled up. As someone said and I so frequently remember, "No one ever died with an empty in-box." That's why I have not been posting as often to this Lenten space, that and I am writing a short travelogue of my days in sunny California which is posted on my blog. This, though, is Lenten space, one for rumination and cogitation and contemplation, something the winter only too easily assists. That's where my thoughts are today, on how much our inner life is touched by the outer. Of course it is obvious that if you have a bad day at work it will affect your mood at home or vice versa. But I have noticed that larger forces, social and natural, have a tidal effect on personal states. I like that image of tides. Anyone who has ever swum (swam?) in the ocean knows that the force of the waves is something you must accept. The day I drove north from LA the road was choked with parked cars of surfers as the waves were at historic heights. I could see their black wet suited bodies carrying the boards down to the beach and specks popping through the crests out beyond the beach. I do not surf, but I have sailed, only rarely but memorably, and the trick is to work with the water and wind not against it. Upwards of ten years ago friends with a boat invited us (wife, self and two young sons) to sail with them for an afternoon on Long Island sound. It was a true sailing vessel, and our host quickly showed up the ropes, perhaps the first time I have said that phrase and meant it literally, ultimately handing the tiller to each of us for a while. It does not take long to realize the boat moves fastest when you marry wind and wave. And it is most thrilling when you do. Translate that spiritually, and I believe that the world outside shapes our inside. They are not separate, though they are distinct. How that happens is as subtle as the moon and stars but it is so, no doubt. And in Lent we are called to pay attention to this sub rosa conversation between the spirit within and the spirit without. It is always there but rarely noted. In California I felt less tense but more sad while in West Michigan I feel more angry than anything. Is one more me than the other, or is it simply a different conversation?
March 6
So where have I been for almost two weeks? In California. There is an annual conference I attend in Montecito, which is next to Santa Barbara. After three months of cold and dark and snow and ice, it is something I anticipate the way children do Christmas. This year I fulfilled a promise to myself to explore the pacific coast highway, California State Road 1, with the excuse that my son is living in a town fifty miles north of San Francisco so I will go and visit him. The trip was about 400 miles, a long day's drive on the highway but three days on the winding road that follows the coast. I'll save you the details here, but you can read about it on my blog and even see a few pictures. All I can say here is that it was most un-Lenten. The sheer wealth of nature, in every sense, overwhelmed my Spartan soul. That and being alone on for three days as I drank in the banquet of ocean, mountains, sky and sun, trees, grasses, even seals, As I stood in the airport Tuesday morning the thought crossed my mind, "Why am I going away from all this?" But after a day back, the rhythms of winter and Lent were clear and strong. Only now there is a pronounced note of anger as well. At our Wednesday devotional yesterday I noticed it in the silent place between verses of psalms we are using to focus on the emotions we try to keep in the shadows. It is good only three or four people are there, as I can take part more as an equal than a leader. Some things are too fragile to share with hundreds, and too important to keep hidden.
Feb 22
George Birthington's Washday as my father called it, and wonder of wonders a second day of sunshine. Still right cold, but the ice is receding slightly under the sublimating powers of the sun and that pleases me. Our Wednesday devotional was even smaller than last week, three instead of four. It has been a long time since I hosted worship for so few. I remember a Sunday in the early 1980s when I was new at ministry, and found myself one of three. This was a small church anyway, rarely exceeding more than 30, but single digit worship is like single digit temps, not just less but a whole new order of things. This time I expected it more, and we sat on the floor of our chapel finding some pause in the week to contemplate the shadows of our lives – things like hurt and rage and bitterness that we think should stay at home or at least under wraps. We read parts of a psalm associated with Lent, allowed King David's pettiness and fear and longing to come out of our mouths. He sounded like a little boy being taunted on a playground, asking God to come and chase the bad boys away. As Sunday approaches my mood changes. The sermon is tapping at my skull, and the words on the page stiff and stuffy approximations of what swirls about in my head. This week I must also memorialize a member, which divides my attention. There is no task with more honor than this, and no task more annoying as it never comes at a convenient day or hour. What did Lennon say about life being what happens to you while you are making other plans?
Feb 17
Driving rain, clogging the streets which are still banked with snow. By nightfall the banks had diminished a lot, except for the end of my driveway where the water collects in a pond and by tomorrow will be a giant iceberg.
The service this morning was almost good. I say almost because all the signs were there: the flow and motion was good, and various thoughts and ideas were swirling together in a way that can coalesce into excellence. But it did not happen. I lost the pulse and pattern somewhere into the first third of the sermon. Preaching is a bit like surfing, the best ones coast on a wave you catch more than form. While I did not wipe out, I wobbled a bit and lost the curl. Darn.
Timing really is everything. Much of being alive is showing up at the right time. Showing up, though, is more than turning up and answering 'present.' When I say showing up I mean being present, alive, engaged, in gear, and so on. As hard as I try, though, sometimes it doesn't happen, and so I wonder whether there needs to be come conspiracy - which means breathing together - with things outside ourselves to really show up. There is an element of luck, grace, whatever you call it, that is the difference between good and great.
Greatness takes two. I can show up and find myself waiting for Godot, that is, alone. God can stand around all day and nothing will get done if nobody else turns up. Think of this as a version of an old conundrum: If God speaks in a forest and nobody is there to hear, does it matter? I suspect we need each other to be what we want, and have yet to find a foolproof way to make that happen. Even God has to catch the wave right.
Feb 15
How the days tear by. I saw this happening when I was young, that some days seemed to drag on and on (Christmas Eve notably) but some roar by. Older friends warned me that this would only get worse. A friend I met in his nineties confirmed that by his age the days whiz by.
Between now and the last entry I have slogged through more snow, driving to see a woman who was on the edge of death. Few things are so sacred and touching as visiting someone who has slipped into the twilight of consciousness. The frequently noted likeness of sleep to death makes the boundary between life and death much softer and harder to notice. Having seen a few people die, I can attest that even when the medical signs are noted, there are still signs of life. We do not die all at once. That I find both disturbing and profound.
She was still alive as I drove north on Tuesday evening. A fresh storm was whipping snow over the roads and we crept along the highway in grooves plowed by those scarcely ahead of us. My windshield washing fluid starting looking a little pekid then. It got worse the next day when the sun came out, but on the highway out to make two other visits (both living) the melt and mud from vehicles ahead of me smeared my windshield every thirty seconds. Why do people say winter is so pretty? I find it filthy - wet, messy, grimy, and cold. It like living in a swamp but with ice and slush instead.
Our first Lenten devotional was lightly attended, very lightly. My colleague and I and two other people. Not since a major snowstorm in my first parish in a tiny town in the rural hills of new England have I conducted a service for so few. Of course I was disappointed. It's sort of like inviting people to a party and no one comes. Hard not to take it personally at first. But once you get past the infantile moments, it was very satisfying. There is a power in worship with a few that it is good to touch again. After all, Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus with only one witness and later baptized privately by one other soul. Worship comes in many sizes.
Today we have our second sunny day in a week. The clouds are coming in as I write this around 1 p.m. My sermon is incomplete. Another megastorm is on the way for this Sunday as it has the last two. But I need a haircut and want to practice the piano. Today, small things are of greater importance than large things. Good.
Feb 10
Finally, I managed to pry the compressed snow and ice from my driveway Saturday morning and afternoon. I was motivated by the promised arrival of that arctic front. What I did not know was that it would be preceded by a furious snowfall that is now plastered to the streets, and that because the temps were so low it is just too damned cold to shovel it. Single digit degrees and double digits winds.
Of course, coming on Saturday night, I knew it would have an effect on Sunday's attendance. I would say a bout 35-45% lower than usual. Can't say I blame them, but as that hour is on my mind all week and this I knew would be pretty good and it cannot simply be postponed and some lesser service substituted, the spirit was challenged shall we say. That is had resumed snowing when we left for church did not help either.
You would think that after all these years I would be more serene about these matters. All those mystics and other saintly types tell us that the purpose of our work and life is not approval or accolades or even appreciation but in the doing itself. And yet I find it hard to accept in a saintly way. Last year, exactly a year and a week ago in fact, Sunday fell on my birthday and I had a sermon and service designed to treat myself a bit. That Sunday we had the biggest blizzard of the year and even fewer were there last year than today. And yes, I was disappointed.
There is something very old in this, old meaning deeply planted in my soul. Of the several therapists I have paid over the years, none have pried it loose. A great shame is involved, I can sense it. Those are the sort of things we keep secret even when we say we will reveal all because it will make us better people.
Lent in its traditional form invites us to consider what makes us ashamed. We decry guilt as if it were a crime, but every one of us does things that deserve shame. Guilt is sometimes quite well earned. The great bargain we have all struck with each other is not to ask each other too insistently about them.
But the silence that results can be cavernous. Maybe this is where loneliness comes from. Could it be that we do not have to reveal our shames and guilts but find some way to acknowledge that we all have them? That would be a start at least.
Feb 8
I am sore. The last snowfall left a lot behind. Yes, I have my driveway plowed. In the end it costs more than a snow blower, but something in me rebels at buying and using one. Just like I pay for lawn mowing rather than buy a lawn mower. Anyway, even after the plow there is plenty to do, like the sidewalks and front walk and the areas that connect the driveway with the back doors. That requires shoveling.
In truth, I like it, or better, I derive satisfaction from it. The sense of accomplishment is real. At the end there is clean pavement. Nothing in clergy life is so neat and tidy as shoveling the walk or ironing shirts or doing the dishes.
This week, though, it was hard on me, physically and spiritually. The snow was heavy and deep. The plow left a lot behind and much of that was compressed into a block that my shovel could barely chip much less remove. So it has taken a lot longer, and the effort has been much harder. There are still parts I cannot remove and by Sunday an Arctic blast will cement it in place even worse.
The sense of satisfaction is not there as the job is incomplete and there is neither the time nor the energy to do it. Failure hovers about the edges of my mood, something I wrestle with often in professional life. That's why shoveling and ironing and washing appeal to me. I do have some shirts upstairs, but my sermon is muttering in my ear.
Acceptance is a lovely word and notion. Who doesn't want to be accepting and be accepted? But sometimes it comes with resignation and frustration, which are most unlovely. However, as Whitehead observed about new ideas, they often arrive with 'disgusting alliances.' Does acceptance mean accepting these as well?
Feb 7
I could not have had a more ashen Wednesday than yesterday, at least in terms of the weather. The snow built through the day, with added wind, so that by mid afternoon it was so strong that we closed the church. Our service, the community diversity lecture, my class, were all cancelled. Crest somewhat fallen - my colleague and I were eager to try this new idea of small focused worship - we trudged through the snow and consoled ourselves with a drink and some long deferred conversation. Though we see each other throughout the week, and often talk, conversation for its own sake has been too rare. I suspect we are not the only ones who find the demands of life to push aside the needs of soul. Conversation, real talking and real listening without a veneer of task or role, is mighty hard to find these days. It seems we must always be about something. Might our advances in technology and communication have a downside in that it forces us to do more stuff because we can? Only on a day when nature requires us to stop do we feel we have the permission to be with one another. While we regretted not having the service I suspect we were also grateful for the gift of unscheduled time. It was possible to talk about our early lives and common friends and the ever enriching challenge of spouses. We walked together through the snow storm as he lives a few blocks beyond me. The flakes clung to our coats and piled onto our hats. And we were grateful also for the gift of an evening with our beloved ones. Lent is accepting gifts we do not seek and finding value in what we do not want.