The Blockbuster Saga in One Picture
Ash Wednesday and the Value of Tradition
Today marks the beginning of the forty-day Christian liturgical season known as Lent, a time of reflection, contemplation, and perhaps even sacrifice in preparation for the coming of the Holy Week that culminates in the celebration of Christ’s Easter resurrection. Throughout the world on Wednesday, Christians from across denominations and traditions will make themselves known through the imposition of ashes in the shape of a cross on their foreheads, small but conspicuous statements about their spiritual identities and, I suspect, their most pressing hopes.
We know from Tolkien that not all who wander are lost. The inverse, of course, is also true. Not all who find themselves moved to religious ritual are finished seeking. Most aren’t, even as many of us wander in and through various religious orbits, spiritual practices, and times of communion and estrangement from God and from each other. Those who will bear the mark of Christ’s cross on Ash Wednesday do so for different, even disparate reasons. Some will wear it as a proud (and I don’t mean prideful) badge, a faithful, even kerygmatic public statement. Some receive the ashes and the Wednesday blessing because of the long pull of tradition. Others are compelled to it by a desire for that same pull and the hope that God might meet us in it. Not all, and perhaps not even many, who wander are lost. Not all who wear ashes are cradle Christians or Christian converts. Not all who take pause on Ash Wednesday will go on to observe a Christian Lent. Not all who hope for Easter’s promise necessarily believe it. Not all who want to feel able. But I do believe, somehow, that all who seek God will find.
I’ve never been much of an Ash-wearer, but I became one last year when confronted with the thousands-fold witness of marked heads on the subway. It was not so much the numbers themselves, but the odd occurrences: every other person in the long corridors beneath Time Square, every fourth or fifth on the 3, a small group walking towards me as I surfaced to street level. If a sacrament is, as theologians are fond of saying, a visible sign of an invisible truth, these pilgrims were sacraments for me. Their willingness to be marked as believers or seekers, and, in either case, people needing something, made me willing, too. Going up the wrong flight of stairs at 14th Street Station and hitting the street at the Church of the Village meant I was greeted with a sign proclaiming Imposition. So then there I was, and there, it seemed, was God. I received ashes and a blessing, a charge to repent, believe, and live. In short, I was moved, felt something, lost my bearings. I didn’t know which way to walk when I came back out to the street. I believe I had a profound, even mystical experience, not because I succumbed to a ritual I’d never valued, but because I believe God uses what God can to meet us where we are. For me, a provisional-at-best Christian, a seminary grad burned out on church and religion, it was the totally new experience of ashes, of anointing prayer and blessing. It was whatever God said to my spirit while the bishop spoke to me.
Over the past year, I’ve found myself much more interested in the mystical Christian traditions than ever before, and needing them. I’ve felt more at home around ritual and process so long as I approach them from humility and from the recognition that God is always bigger than the things we do and that when God meets us in those things, it’s because God is God, not because we’ve done religious work God deems cosmically essential. But it’s also true that our drive to meet God in places carved out by tradition echos something cosmically essential: an understanding that we want and need the mystical, the holy; a hope that God will meet us wherever it is we seek to find.
This Ash Wednesday, I am reminded that the power of Christian ritual has absolutely nothing to do with it being set down by patriarchs with apostolic authority or some other contrived historiography that super-values the existential (and perhaps compulsive) needs of long-dead saints. For me, our rituals, like our stories, are opportunities to embrace the basic Christian claim: the in-breaking of God at every turn, the furious longing on God’s part for time and eternity with us.
Fastnacht Day: Success!
Friends, I did not make it to Egypt Star yesterday, but I did succeed in my primary goal, which was to enjoy a genuine Lehigh Valley Fastnacht (plain) at Mary Ann Donut Kitchen. Like most people in Allentown, I love Mary Ann Donuts. They are the best and most authentic of all Allentown pastries. As Linus Van Pelt might say, they are sincere.
While Mary Ann usually has a huge variety of freshly-made donuts, bagels, and crullers on hand, the only offerings yesterday were three varieties of the traditional Pennsylvania German pre-Lenten pastry. Reports from early in the morning had Fastnacht-seekers lining out the door for over two hours. By the time of my visit around 1 PM, the place was still full and still filling.
My Fastnacht was excellent, by the way. An added bonus: Mary Ann’s always delightful staff were wearing special shirts that read:
FASTNACHT DAY
POWDERED
SUGARED
PLAIN
Perfect.
Happy Fastnacht Day!
Maybe you call it Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras. In these parts, friend, it’s Fastnacht Day. My pledge to you, dear reader, is that I will not repeat last year’s poor showing. Not only will I enjoy fastnachts (yes, plural) today, but I will be enjoying them from Mary Ann Donut Kitchen. Holler if you know what’s up. I may also venture to Egypt Star Bakery so as to get the most fat for my Tuesday.
This is a big deal. As I said last year, we used to even get faschnats in elementary school. Enjoy yours early and often. Then get your butt to church on Wednesday for the imposition of ashes.
I never used to take part in that particular Lenten tradition, but I did it last year from a place of feeling like I really needed to do something different, even if only provisional, to connect with the Holy.
I’ve been on a long, interesting journey since then. I’m not ashamed to drop the qualifier “provisional” from my status as Christian, so long as epistemological humility isn’t breached. But I’m still more apt to describe my faith in Conan O’Brien terms than, say, the limiting language you might hear in some Christian quarters. Even so, even so, I find myself much more interested in the mystical traditions than ever before, much more at home around ritual and structure so long as I can approach them, too, from a place of humility and from a recognition that God is bigger than the things we do and that when God meets us in those things, it’s because God is God, not because we’ve done something cosmically essential. But it’s also true that our drive to meet God in places carved out by tradition echos something cosmically essential: an understanding that we want and need the mystical, the holy; a hope the God will meet us wherever it is we seek to find.
For me, the power of Christian ritual has absolutely nothing to do with it being set down by patriarchs with apostolic authority or some other contrived historiography that super-values the existential (and perhaps compulsive) needs of long-dead saints. For me, our rituals, like our stories, are opportunities to embrace the basic Christian claim: the in-breaking of God at every turn, the furious longing on God’s part for time and eternity with us.
Oh boy. This post was supposed to be about donuts. More to come on Huffington, I think.
Happy Faschnat Day!
Baseball Is America: Lia Petridis Maiello talks to Lawrence Baldassaro about Baseball and the Italian-American Experience
When I was in divinity school, Randall Balmer paraphrased Bart Giamatti’s prescient insight about baseball and the immigrant experience both being quests (even spiritual quests) for home. That always stuck with me. In this piece from 2011, Lia Petridis Maiello talks to Lawrence Baldassaro about his book on the concept.
Charlie Sheen is Not a Dancing Bear. He’s a Hunger Artist (and a Person).
I’m not a medical professional or a mental health expert but, regarding Charlie Sheen, the possibilities are pretty clear: he either needs psychiatric counseling or is secretly one-upping Joaquin Phoenix and James Franco in a rather brilliant meta-stunt. Unfortunately, people who know much more about these things than I do are convinced we are witnessing the public self-destruction of fellow human being. Increasingly, I believe that many of us are also guilty of enabling and exploiting it.
Jonathan Storm writes a TV column for The Philadelphia Inquirer and has this to say:
“Charlie Sheen is not a dancing bear. If he were, and made the rounds on 20/20 or The Today Show, people would raise howls about animal cruelty.”
Storm is right, of course. When the circus came to Philly last month, people protested. No one’s picketing outside the studios picking from the ribs of what seems to be Sheen’s complete and total breakdown. I know, I know, we’re not supposed to sympathize with the rich kid, the Brat Packer, the guy who has everything and is, of his own volition, throwing it all away. The guy who makes a gazillion dollars a year playing a slightly bowdlerized version of himself on TV. But you know what? I do sympathize with him. And I also happen to believe that when it comes to things like addiction and mental illness, you go ahead and throw volition out the window. I’m not saying he has license to do whatever the hell he wants (he might say that), but I am questioning the callousness of those who would reject all gestures of empathy or compassion to a sick human being merely because said sickness contributes to piss-poor choices and indefensible behavior.
Storm’s quote reminded me of a short story by Franz Kafka called “A Hunger Artist” wherein a caged performance artist fasts for days on end to the delight and initial sympathy of gathered, gawking crowds. It begins thusly:
“During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished. It used to pay very well to stage such great performances under one’s own management, but today that is quite impossible. We live in a different world now. At one time the whole town took a lively interest in the hunger artist; from day to day of his fast the excitement mounted; everybody wanted to see him at least once a day; there were people who bought season tickets for the last few days and sat from morning till night in front of his small barred cage; even in the nighttime there were visiting hours, when the whole effect was heightened by torch flares; on fine days the cage was set out in the open air, and then it was the children’s special treat to see the hunger artist; for their elders he was often just a joke that happened to be in fashion, but the children stood openmouthed, holding each other’s hands for greater security, marveling at him as he sat there pallid in black tights, with his ribs sticking out so prominently, not even on a seat but down among straw on the ground… ”
The hunger artist has handlers, keepers, and promoters, and these people attach or enforce certain rules to his performance. He must not eat while on display in his cage, and men are paid to ensure he does not eat in secret. Even so, any good crowd has its skeptics. Further, the artist is only allowed to fast for 40 days at a time, and is brought, gaunt and Christ-like, from his cage for a spectacular finale. The 40-day rule is not for the artist’s health, mind you, but rather so that audiences don’t loose interest or compassion. The artist hates the rule, as it prohibits him from perfecting his hunger art, from pushing himself to his absolute limit, from the total annihilation of need and self.
“So he lived for many years, with small regular intervals of recuperation, in visible glory, honored by all the world, yet in spite of that troubled in spirit, and all the more troubled because no one would take his trouble seriously. What comfort could he posibly need? What more could he possibly wish for? And if some good-natured person, feeling sorry for him, tried to console him by pointing out that his melancholy was probably caused by fasting, it could happen, especially when he had been fasting for some time, that he reacted with an outburst of fury and to the general alarm began to shake the bars of the cage like a wild animal.Yet the impresario had a way of punishing these outbreaks which he rather enjoyed putting into operation. He would apologize publicly for the artist’s behavior, which was only to be excused, he admitted, because of the irritability caused by fasting; a condition hardly to be understood by well-fed people; then by natural transition he went on to mention the artist’s equally incomprehensible boast that he could fast for much longer than he was doing…and then quite simply countered it by bringing out photographs, which were also on sale to the public, showing the artist on the fortieth day of a fast lying in bed almost dead from exhaustion.”
Eventually, public interest in fasting as an art form wanes. Compassionate crowds grow disaffected, hardened. The fascinated children embrace their forebears’ ironic love of jokes in fashion. The artist is forgotten, starves to death. His cage goes to a panther:
“Even the most insensitive felt it refreshing to see this wild creature leaping around the cage that had so long been dreary. The panther was all right. The food he liked was brought him without hesitation by the attendants; he seemed not even to miss his freedom; his noble body, furnished almost to the bursting point with all that it needed, seemed to carry freedom around with it too; somewhere in his jaws it seemed to lurk; and the joy of life streamed with such ardent passion from his throat that for the onlookers it was not easy to stand the shock of it. But they braced themselves, crowded round the cage, and did not want ever to move away.”
About those fickle crowds, you might say Kafka’s cheating about that anyway. Why should they have been made to care about the hunger artist in the first place? After all, here’s a man destroying his body of his own volition. Ah, but that assumes we always pick our cages.
And I Made Up My Own Little Sign
Chris Cocca 