Ashes, Ashes

Ten years ago I decided take public the very private parts of my life that involve seeking meaning and showing emotion. I wouldn’t have described it that way back then, but I see now that that’s what happened.

I became a pastor. Congregational minister. Parson? I get confused by the words, too.

I cry fairly often at the pulpit, because life is very sad and hard and I can’t pretend otherwise. I have a theory that uncried tears become disease in our bodies, so I let them come wherever I am. The other day it was on a plane from Washington to Albany. Who knows where it will happen today.

I’ve stepped up to the microphone probably close to five hundred times this past decade, at the two churches where I’ve worked and at churches in other places: Stowe, Squaw Valley, Lake George, Landgrove. They really do build churches in the nicest places. I like the humble ones, without too much fussy decor, where you can think about your connection to Source free from the manipulations of shiny objects. Some churches force you to think in certain ways about God; I like the ones that respect the truth that everyone experiences the divine in their own way.

I also like art museums and wooded trails and formal gardens. Good places to feel a sense of awe, curiosity.

I also like airports, cities, any place where I can sit on a bench and look at people.

I understand where I find connection to the source of Love in this world; I know by now how to plug myself in to the endlessly replenishing Source that it available to us in this life. I’m not sure I’d be able to stay on this painful, burning, flooding, chemical-saturated planet very long if I didn’t know where or how to access the anchor I call God (but you can call anything you like).

In truth I don’t really like the word God because it conjures for me a time in my life when I was subject to a religious experience that didn’t mean anything. There was an unexplained obligation to go to church every Sunday, something truly confusing about eating fish on Fridays and lots of stand, sit, kneel. I recall being shushed by adults a lot, sitting in those awful pews. The rituals were hollow, the buildings were cold, the iconography was scary and the priests were raping children, big surprise there.

I do not recall one instance of being connected to something larger, something meaningful, something comforting.

I wish I could say that those early church experiences ignited in me a yearning to understand life on a deeper level, but I think we all come hardwired that way. If anything, those early introductions to that brand of religion probably derailed me from my seeking nature. If that was the way to God, then God was not for me.

As far as I can tell I didn’t set out to become a pastor, it was not intentional. And it wasn’t a calling, either, though people love to describe it that way. There is no ministerial whistle that some of us hear and others don’t. It’s a job, and what I’ve been doing all these years is offering a public expression of my deepest yearnings to experience Infinity as often and as closely as possible. A good pastor, I think, admits they know nothing, that they are simply making themself available for Source to work through them. It’s why I hate all the rigamarole (though I do love that word) that comes with becoming a pastor: the classes, the costuming, the intellectualization of a deeply somatic experience. To become a conduit is a humbled stance. I don’t care about your PhD, show me your worn sneakers from visiting the homeless, show me your outstretched hand, giving what you have away. Show me how you are trying to become a better version of you with each passing year.

I bumble here, I fumble there, I worry that we are all becoming more and more detached from the Source of Love. We are scared and angry so we drink and use drugs to make the bad feelings go away. Or we are scared and angry and we harm others, thinking they deserve our pain.

I’ve noticed the suffering seems to be speeding up, that these days I am responding more frequently to events of profound loss. I’ve noticed that people, young ones especially, don’t have the skills they need to navigate life. That many of them are retreating instead of advancing, shying away from anything uncomfortable. I’ve noticed the planet is having a hard time, too. Last week my daughter was supposed to travel to Reno, but it was on fire, so we met in North Carolina to visit her brother and were going to go to the coast, but it got flooded. Sometimes I wonder if our worlds are shrink, shrink, shrinking. Schools aren’t safe; flights are never on time (the other day mine was delayed because the pilot was “stuck in the elevator.” 🤔); the places humans used to congregate (churches) are dying off.

What do we turn to when the world around us is falling down? I will note that twice in the last week I heard people singing that creepy nursery rhyme, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

What do we turn to during this profoundly challenging moment in human history?

The link to the Divine that we brought into this world with us when we were born. We are each hardwired to seek meaning, to express our gifts and talents in a creative way. It is imperative that you figure that out. Unfortunately they don’t teach it in school or church, but I’m telling you right here, right now. Who the heck are you? If you haven’t figured it out yet, please tend to that inquiry. I don’t mean dad, sister, baker, banker. I mean who are you when all of those words are stripped away? Who the heck are you?

You are a soul, animated from within a corporeal experience. Your gifts to this world come in the form of your work, your service. Being who you are is not self-indulgent, it is the way to growth, evolution and joy. When you figure out how to tap into your inborn connection to Source you are ALIVE. Your presence here as an Alive person mitigates the suffering around you. This is how it works. Figure out what you came here to do, what is your deepest dream, your highest desire? Do it. Every relationship you have is there to teach you something about yourself, is an opportunity to do better. Do better.

I cry at the pulpit a lot because deep inside I know the potential we have as humans and I see how we all fall so very short. A person has died and I cry; deep inside I wonder why they drank themself to death. A young man has murdered his family and I wail; deep inside I wonder why no one helped him deal with his anger. A daughter suffers, disconnected from her father and I cannot hold back the tears; deep inside I wonder why no one has picked up the fucking phone.

Ashes, ashes. Are we all falling?

We don’t have to. We’re better than that. Own your power, own your worth, live in truth, get to work.

Photo by Joanne Francis on Unsplash