Ritualizing transitions

What do a hornet’s nest, a self-portrait, a banjo, a philosophy book, and a narwhal stuffy have in common?  These were some of the many items that showed up at the church last evening for the closing mini-retreat of the Transitions and Ritual group. 

Each participant was asked to bring several symbolic objects that represent the stage/era/phase of life that is ending/fading/receding and the stage/era/phase of life that is beginning/emerging/taking shape.  Each of the eight participants had time to describe why they brought their particular objects and how they relate to grief and gratitude for what is coming to a close, and aspiration and intention for what is coming into view. 

Each person was also asked to name this new phase they are living into.  These names included Intimacy, Fruitful Ordinariness, The Paradoxical Expansiveness of Finite Time, Early Elderhood, and Myself.

This has been a two-month process.  We began at the end of August with an opening mini-retreat and have met for five Sunday school sessions.  We started broadly, discussing different ways of thinking about life transitions and mapping out some of the most formative and difficult transitions we’ve experienced so far.  Eventually each person narrowed their focus to one transition they are currently undergoing.  Last night’s gathering was our way of ritualizing that transition together, witnesses to one another’s journey.

It’s a great honor to be let in on the inside of another person’s life.  Especially during these pivotal times when small shifts have accumulated into something that needs a new name. 

The worship service this Sunday will have a transitions focus and will be led by these eight folks.  It will include a time for the congregation to offer our blessing to them in their honoring of what has been, and their receiving of what is next.

Joel

Beauty Saves?

The headlines aren’t getting any prettier, but here in the remnants of the temperate deciduous forest you can’t take a step these days without encountering beauty.  The fiery sugar maple in our backyard has let go of enough leaves to blanket the ground beneath it, still holding on to enough to fill itself with color.  The yellowing pawpaw leaves on the bike trail by the river are bowing lower, a humbled posture, soon to let go, but not just yet.  The serviceberry in front of the church is keeping watch over the rain garden as they both undergo transition.   

In Dostoyevsky’s novel, The Idiot, Prince Myshkin declares “I believe the world will be saved by beauty.”  This line has come up in several conversations I’ve been part of recently. 

It can be a hard thing to believe, or perhaps not.

Harder than believing it is learning to see beauty and letting it change us.  Even something as beautiful as autumn in Ohio can be missed.  Even something as awe inspiring as a child can be ignored.  And then there are the things deemed less-than-beautiful – certain people, places, situations, one’s inner life.

If beauty does save the world maybe it is because beauty demands reverence.  And reverence changes our entire relationship with that which we revere.  We each see beauty in different things and need each other’s eyes to recognize it, to widen the reverence. 

Saving the world feels out of reach.  Looking for beauty in all things feels like it could be fun, even possible.  Especially with the way those trees are looking right now.     

Joel

Indigenous People’s Day and the stories we must tell

This Monday was Indigenous People’s Day, a refocusing of Columbus Day. 

While in Minnesota last month, I had a morning to walk through the Minnesota History Center in Saint Paul.  I spent the most time in the exhibit Our Home: Native Minnesota.  It focused on the long history of the Dakota in the region, and the shorter history of the Ojibwe, who migrated from the East to the Great Lakes, making their way to what is now Minnesota in the 1600s.      

Walking through the exhibit called to mind the book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  The author, Carolyn Fraser, begins by detailing the Dakota Wars of the 1860s, laced with broken promises from the US government to the Dakota.  This era included the largest mass execution in US history, approved by President Lincoln – the public hanging of 38 Dakota men.  The relocation of the Dakota opened more land for White settlement, including several of the homes of Laura Ingalls’ family.        

Not seeing any displays on the Dakota Wars, I asked a museum guide if I was missing something.  She noted there was a full display in another section of the museum, but that the Indigenous leaders who designed this exhibit wished to focus on the strength and beauty of their history rather than the tragedy. 

A similar theme surfaced several weeks ago when four of us from CMC met with Ty Smith, the Executive Director of NAICCO,  The Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio.  In telling their story, Ty started with pre-colonial times and quickly jumped to the 20^th century.  I couldn’t help but comment that he had skipped over a world of pain.  He noted that healing from trauma is an ever-present part of their reality and that an important part of this is telling a different story to themselves about who they are.  Not merely victims or “angry Indians,” in his words, but a resourceful community committed to caring for one another and celebrating its gifts. 

You can give directly to NAICCO’s Land Back campaign HERE.

In following up with our antiracism focus on Sunday, it seems that this journey can look very different depending on where you stand in the overall story.  For some of us, it looks like becoming more familiar with the violent history that has led to where we are now and coming to terms with this part of our inheritance.  For others, all too familiar with this legacy, it looks like finding the joy, the beauty, the resurrection power that persists. 

It might be the both/and of this that can open the way for a new chapter altogether.          

Joel