Ash Wednesday: Marked by a Cross

photo courtesy of U.S. Pacific Fleet / flickr

It’s cold. South Carolina cold. The temperatures have dipped down several night into the high twenties. More than one night I left the spigots trickling—I am not sure South Carolina houses are built for this cold weather. My daffodils are slowly coming up. Here and there the touch of yellows gives me hope that soon the temperatures will slowly climb upward and flowers will cover the now-parched ground.

And so the Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday. It is getting darker sooner and the wind is strong and some days the promise of a cross and an empty tomb and Easter seem far away. 

 We Christians need to remember who we are and whose we are. And that smudge—on our foreheads marks us once more. Not Republicans, not Democrats—not Americans—not Trumpers and not-ever Trumpers. We are marked by the sign of the cross. 

I admit, like many of you, I have listened to too much news, read too many newspapers and watch too many debates. I am bent low when I think about where we Christians are today—where our country and the world is today. There is this fissure, this great divide that separates us one from another. And if we keep listening to the pundits and all the gloomy fear-soaked news—we are liable to drown in this stuff.

Someone asked me what I am going to give up for Lent. No cookies or candy or shedding a few pounds.This Lent calls us to deeper things. What? A cross on our foreheads. It holds us more than anything else in this world. The old Anglican prayer for this season sets us straight. ”…come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save”.

What will I give up for Lent? All the out-there that widens every day.  No. I will give up, at least for a season all this I-phone, I-pad, Social media, Tweets that continually tell us the sky is falling. I will try to give these all up.

And I will try to remember that long line I stood in today as my turn came to receive the ashes. In front of me was this old man on a walker. There was a man whose face reflects the hardness of his days. There was that couple, holding hands probably college students. The woman behind me kept dabbing her eyes. I know no names here. Just that all of us need what we find at the altar. The reminder that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.” 

So I walk away carrying the burden of the cross. Outside a bird sings. The daffodils are slowly coming up. Here and there I see Lenten roses. Across the street from the church even in this cold—college kids throw frisbees and footballs. All around me I see life. And this is what I will not give up. Hope. Faith and Love. 

Yet Temp Sparkman’s poem gives me hope. He wrote the words after the tragic death of his nine-old daughter. His beautiful poem ends this way:

“Were things really ever green

And will the spring come back again

Yes, yes, as sure as e’re it were here

Yes, yes, as sure as winter’s here

Yes, yes, as sure as God is

The spring will return

And it will be green again.”

   —G. Temp Sparkman

I will do my best to push all the thus-and-so-ness of my life away. I’ll still vote in the Primary this Saturday. I will still pray that this country might just live up to our old-dream: liberty and justice for all. 

But I will remember the life stirring around me I cannot give up. Paul, more strident than Bernie Sanders, wrote in a very hard time:”Nothing will separate us from the love of God.” No thing.

I remember the one who gave us this cross. He said: Watch. Open your eyes. Look around you. Hear. Don’t miss what’s here. Maybe Mary Oliver says it best in her poem, “When  Death Comes”,  “ | don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

So this Ash Wednesday I have once again stood in the line. Remembering that my grieving friend may have said it best: “The spring will return and it will be green again.”

photo by Linda moving ahead / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

The Problem With Living Sacrifices

Coventry Cathedral

You could always count on it at least four or five times a year. We Baptists give an Invitation to join the church after the sermon. On most Sundays we have as many takers as, say the Episcopalians. Often as the Invitation was extended, down the aisle Mabel would come. She would always hug me, wipe away the tears and whisper that she wanted to rededicate her life. She had messed up and wanted to start all over again. Choir members would roll their eyes, some in the audience would whisper to one another. Bouffant hairdo, gravelly voice from too many cigarettes and booze, she seemed to live from crisis to crisis. Either her marriage or her job or the kids were giving her trouble. Again and again she would march down to the front and members would think, “Well, there she goes again.”

That happened a long time ago and yet I wonder where Mabel is and how she is doing. I wonder if she is still striding down that aisle again and again and asking forgiveness and wanting to start over again. Maybe that’s what Lent is all about. Like Mabel all we poor little sheep have lost our way and need some beginning again. Mabel kept hoping that maybe, just maybe she might begin to get it right. Her job, her kids, her marriage—her broken life.

Elizabeth Elliot said one time that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar. Lent pulls me back to the painful mirror of realism. I read the old words like: “Rend your hearts and not your garments…” “Have mercy upon me O God…” “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves…” And I remember that this particular sacrifice—me—has crawled off the altar more often than I like to admit.

So this Lenten season I remember Mabel and I remember my own life. We aren’t that far apart really. Just poor little sheep who can’t seem as much as we try to stay on that altar. But I keep opening the book and bowing my head and hoping that God will, as the book says, “bring his work to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Maybe Yogi Berra was right: “it ain’t over ‘till it’s over.” I am betting my life that it may just be true.

(At the beginning of the Lenten season 2010 I wrote this blog piece. Moving back again down memory lane I  still 

remember Mabel who kept coming down the aisle taking my preacher's hand and saying: "Preacher I need to start over gain. I have failed so much." And as I move down the aisle to receive the ashes on my forehead this Lenten season it is my own failures that I remember.)

photo by Tim / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Zelma: A Tribute

One little girl was overheard praying, "Dear God, are boys better than girls? I know you are one, but try to be fair."

God was fair and is fair. And God must have chuckled at that little girl saying: God was a He. Zelma would have loved that story because she was a geat laugh-ter.

Today at 2:00 her service will be held at the Wise Baptist Church, Wise, Virginia.  I wish I could have been there just to see the place that shaped much of who she was. I would have liked to meet her family--a least those that are left. Sitting on those front pews will be her children and then two sisters and three brothers. Zelma was the 13th of fourteen children.

I knew her when her life was in full bloom. Married to Pat, she was  a Hospice Chaplain in  Birmingham for eighteen years. I wonder how many families she touched. If anybody ever doubted the gifts of women preachers--they had not met Zelma Pattillo. After her retirement she and Pat  settled in Birmingham and joined our church. This is when I really got to know Zelma. The few times I heard her preach she opened up her heart and told us stories of who had helped shape her life. My, my she could preach! I told her once that I wanted her to speak at my funeral. But that was not to be. We talked often and emailed much. She struggled with should she move back to Wise or stay in Birmingham. Wise won out. So her life had come full circle she came home to where she started--surrounded by those she loved overlooking mountains, tall trees and she added: "a few nuts."

After she left Wise the door opened and the doors just kept opening. Wherever she went she made her mark at a time when opportunities for women were often meagre. From that school in Wise where she sat in a class with grades one to five, she finished the University with a triple major: math and physics and history. She was offered a full scholarship to work on a PHD but she was not altogether sure that was the path she wanted to take. Her journey reminds me of those wonderful words of Robert Frost: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.""

And what a difference that road made. After several jobs she found her way to the Baptist Seminary in Louisville. When she graduated she was offered a job in Clemson by Charles Arrington the warm and wise Pastor of the First Baptist Church. But she heard another voice and it led her back to Louisville Seminary and a guy named Pat. They were married for 48 years. They had two children whom they dearly loved: Stephen and Laura.

She was ordained to the ministry at the Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville. Few women were ordained in that day. She served on the staff of several distinguished churches but her great work began in 1988 when she became a Hospice Chaplain in Birmingham. For eighteen years she ministered to countless numbers of families and before she retired she was Coordinator of a team of 12 chaplains. 

To understand a person the facts do not tell much of the story--but underneath the facts where the heartbeat truly resides she really discovered that God really is fair--even with girls. And so did we.

Thank God for giving us Zelma. If I was standing at that graveside this afternoon in Wise,Virginia this is the blessaing I would give her:

"Into paradise may the angels lead dear Zelma, at her coming may the martyrs take her up into eternal rest, and may the chorus of angels lead her to that holy city, and the place of perpetual light. Amen."

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Romney and Jones: Profiles in Courage

--Photo by open minded in Alabama

"One day posterity will remember these strange

times, when ordinary common honesty was called courage"

    
 --Yevgeny Youtushenko --His defiant verse inspired a whole generation of young Russians in their fight against Stalinism in the Cold war.

--Roger Lovette--rogerlovette.blogspot.com