When The World Ends (Again And Again)
Long-Ago Lents, Lutheran Traditions, & This Present Moment
Dear Friends,
For the past few months, I have been slowly working my way through a devotional from the 1950s based on various texts by Martin Luther. It’s an odd choice, and he can get a bit repetitive in regards to his takes on grace, but it’s been worth revisiting this place.
With apologies to the ELCA-folks here, I confess I was raised amidst a bit of a liturgical mess. My parish struggled to adopt anything resembling denominational norms – I don’t remember ever seeing a copy of the Lutheran Book of Worship (or the 1991 Hymnal Supplement) during my childhood, though after years of slowly dragging the community begrudgingly into forms of worship that would be recognizable to others in our denomination, we did eventually move into the new Evangelical Lutheran Worship books around the time it was published (2006).
By the time ELW was published and in our hands, I would have been confirmed, would have carved out a place serving in the Sunday School, and I was undeniably entranced by traditional sung worship settings. In fact, I would have already had some of my most formative experiences as a confirmation student participating in Holden Evening Prayer during the Wednesdays in Lent a few years before.
When I think about that time, it makes me think that those particular worship experiences are why Lent is my favorite liturgical season. As a deeply depressed teenager with a bear trap of a memory, I quickly absorbed the entire Holden setting into my memory. Written for a community tucked snugly into the cold and dark of Washington state winters, Holden Evening Prayer offered a sort of embodiment at a time when I was otherwise fleeing such a state.
In The Bleak Midwinter
I know – it’s the wrong season for that hymn – but it’s below freezing outside and really, it’s typically colder where I live in the early days of Lent than during Advent. The plants are dead, the streets crusted with snow and ice. Bleak is a fitting word, and I’m thinking about how that word sits alongside the presence of grace.
Recently, I was with some dear Godly Play friends and colleagues and we were talking about the things we grapple with alongside the young people in our communities, and about the idea that they are coming to terms with additional existential limits that we may not have considered – specifically, climate anxiety. How might our faith stories help us talk about this sense that we are living at the end of the world and there’s not much we can do about it?
What was your end of the world?
Maybe this is a little like those “where were you when…” questions that every generation seems to have. When we landed on the moon. When JFK was shot. When the World Trade Center went down.
Where were you when you felt like the world was ending?
I felt like the world was ending not long before I encountered the Holden Evening Prayer setting, as a middle schooler watching the United States prepare to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq. I remember that feeling like the end of the world.
How many times can you feel like the world is ending?
What does the world ending look and feel like at different ages?'
I think I am just old enough that I understand the younger generations’ climate anxiety without it being my primary end of the world association. It’s not my story, but I can imagine that it feels like they’re watching the world end again and again and again in quick succession, season after season, year after year.
I wonder if Abraham and Sarah felt like the world was ending as they grew older and older without a child? As God made a covenant with them and yet they still waited?
They had picked up their entire lives to go elsewhere. They were ready to try anything (including having Abraham bear a child with Hagar). Who would remember them?
When we turn to the story of the Great Family, we often focus on the surprise of Isaac, on the power of naming, on our place in that story. But I think we forget about the open, empty places, the time between the promise and its fulfillment. What did that waiting feel like?
Maybe it felt a little like the cold and dark of winter. You can believe or even know that the light is coming and yet come to doubt it when it’s dark enough for enough time.
I think Lent brings us close to that sort of mood. It’s long enough, dark enough, that we can think the light will never come back. It’s why Holy Saturday is so extraordinarily silent. It’s the day that stretches on and on and on, while we wait.
In The Waiting
So, how are we sitting with the darkness and reflection of Lent? Or just being present and accepting the grace the world offers amidst those conflicting moments when it seems like the world is ending? A few offerings:
Practical Resources for Churches’ Cultivate Faith program is offering a program of bedtime stories at 7PM ET Wednesdays and Sundays during Lent. You can register for the Zoom story sessions here.
Incidentally, I’m on the same page but my stories are a little earlier (because my bedtime is also early!) I’ll be reading stories that go with my parish’s Lent programming Thursday evenings at 6:30 ET. Reply to this email for detail on that!
This is a season suitable for lament. After early discussion and acknowledgement, many of our communities have fallen largely silent around ongoing global crises, including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. As I reflect on my Lutheran roots, I found myself looking at their worship resources on this topic. What approaches to lament help you connect with the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of y/our heart?
Speaking of feelings of brokenness (and sticking with what it was like to be a teen in the church in the dark of Lent), I’m really interested in exploring the Rev. Sarah Griffith Lund’s latest book, “Blessed Youth: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness with Children and Teens.” Have you read any of her work on mental illness in the church? This seems so essential – maybe we have a book study in our future!
Did you hear there’s a new discussion and activity guide for Laura Alary’s “Make Room”? There is! And you can download it here.
One of the places of lament that I think the church-at-large is perhaps starting to turn a bit more attention to is its mistreatment of disabled individuals. I was deeply heartened by this article from the Friends Journal, “Welcoming Joy and Spirit through Accessibility,” which mirrors a number of conversations I’ve been having in different contexts.
Finally, Westminster John Knox Press has a beautiful video series up, Pause: Spending Lent with the Psalms, based on Elizabeth Caldwell’s book “Pause.” While not specifically designed for children, Caldwell has been a gift to the world of children’s faith formation and spirituality.
What resources are guiding your experience of Lent this year? I hope you’ll share the signposts in your wilderness with this community.
Peace,
Bird