Week #17 Ash Wednesday

Resurrection!  The rebirth of OneChurchAWeek.blogspot.com.  Both of my readers have asked “what happened to your one church a week project?”  Well it was a complicated personal situation revolving around two major life changing events.  One, I started playing soccer on Sunday mornings, and two about 6 months ago a soda spilled on the laptop.  So as you can guess these are two very shitty reasons to stop the project.  One, soccer games are about 90 minutes and often are played well after the regular church going time, also there are pretty much church services every half hour all day Sunday.  Two, the great coke spill didn’t actually ruin the computer, it just made the keys a little sticky, also we have another laptop, and Brian actually bought me a Mac book pro about 4 months ago.  So…like the golf clubs, skis, oil paints, jewelry making beads, tennis racket…one church a week went the way of all my collected hobbies, after about two months I closed the word document and took up yoga. 

The sad thing is there were so many good church opportunities that were missed because I was too lazy to keep this going.  We spent nearly the whole of November in Africa, just imagine the churches there!  Well you’ll have to because we didn’t bother to go, and I didn’t bother to write so I guess imagination is all I can offer.  Why the second coming…let’s face it, I can’t work in IT management forever.  I have to show up at an office 5 days a week, make decisions about things, deal with people...  What I need is a career as a professional author, with book advances and no alarm clocks.  Since I have no real literary skills, I need to focus on what I do have, a trendy gimmick that could be turned into a book or at least a solid pamphlet.  Here is the plan: spend a year really writing these-at least one a month- strip out the sarcasm and offensive language and sell the remaining seven words as a guide to local churches.  Game plan!

But why now?  Well, I had an appointment Wednesday morning in DC; I never go into the city during the week because other people are really awful at driving, and I like my suburbs.  Suburbs don’t have pretentious metro riders who think they are in Carl Rove’s inner circle because they interned at a K Street think tank last summer.  Suburbs also have free parking.   Anyway, I was just trying to blend in to the urban backdrop when a girl walked by with a smudgy black mark on her forehead.  Granted there are a lot of grimy homeless people in DC with street dirt on their faces, but this girl was walking upright and not laying over the warm steam of a sewer vent, so I realized it was Ash Wednesday.  That realization made me miss my one church a week.  I actually thought, maybe I should swing by a church right now and get this blog thing going again, but then I realized that girl with the ash smudged had not gone to church at all. 

As I turned the corner, just outside of the Foggy Bottom metro stop, they were just ashing people on the street, no church required.  At first I thought it was the Catholics, there was incense, and robes, and who else even cares about Ash Wednesday?…but no they would never be on the street, catering to the masses in this drive-by style holy day, but who then? Ah the Episcopalians…they look like Catholics from a block away but once you get closer the priest has a vagina and in this case likely a girlfriend.  I tried to craft how I would get more than three sentences out of this encounter, but no, I figured I would do this for real…at least this week. 

 Week # 17 St. John Neumann Catholic Community

What a great day and time to start back up, the Pope just quit, and I can knock a week out without waking up early on a Sunday.  I called Brian right away to fill him in on the plans.  I decided to go Catholic for a few reasons, one we had not officially blogged about a Catholic Church, two I actually love the Ash Wednesday gospel, three who else even cares about Ash Wednesday?  After work, one of us went to yoga, the other went to happy hour and we met up for church at 7:30.  So there is one thing you need to know about my husband, he has a tiny winy little baby princess bladder.  It is not his fault, it is genetic, my brother-in-law is much worse, but that is irrelevant because after three 20oz Blue Moons I knew there was no way he could make it through an hour long service.  I was right, he didn’t even make it to the pew before the first rest stop.  We were already barely on time, and now we had to deal with my least favorite church goer of all, the aisle sitter.  There is a whole long pew, the place is filling up, why are you sitting on the end, making everyone awkwardly squeeze by you, stepping on your toes and straining to avoid rubbing against you.  Just move in, go to the middle, because I’m watching you, and you NEVER leave early.  I had to uncomfortably slide by, I had to make the awkward decision between facing you and risking biscuit on biscuit contact or facing away like I’m boxing you out for a rebound, and then you have the nerve to stay until the 4^th verse of the closing hymn…seriously.   It was even worse because I knew Brian would need a potty break half way through this, and now we were stuck in the middle.  We typically arrive late, leave early, and skip communion; we deserve the aisle.

So the service, if you’ve been to one Catholic mass you’ve been to them all, but if not here’s what your missing: it starts with a procession of 3-4 children in white robes carrying candles and a crucified Jesus on a long pole, followed by men in robes holding up a giant bible.  Once they reach the altar there is a series of sitting and standing and sayings and responses and prayers that have been roughly the same since the services were first translated into English, I think the 1960s.  If you’ve been as a guest it likely can be pretty awkward because everyone seems to know when to stand, when to kneel, and what to say just like perfect little sheep.  Turns out it is now also awkward for sporadic or prodigal Catholics too.  Why?  Because before he decided to up and quit, the current pope also decided to change the words in some of the responses, yes the ones I just said had been “roughly” the same for 50 years.  All this change does is help the “good Catholics” separate themselves from the Christmas and Easter (or in this case Ash Wednesday) Catholics, and we fell right into the trap.  We blurted out what was clearly an outdated response in perfectly audible voices that just seemed to carry from the middle pew to both ends.

The pope may have changed the responses, but he didn’t change the reading that is done every Ash Wednesday, and honestly, I like the message. In short it goes something like:  pray in private, give to the poor in private, fast in private and God will provide your reward.  You don’t need to run around in the street and proclaim to all that you are praying or fasting or giving. This is pretty much a complete paradox to the concept of walking around all day with a gray cross on your face, proving that you prayed, went to church, and plan to fast.  What is that logic?

So why the ashes, according to the bible, Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert, where he endured temptations by the devil. So this really does nothing to explain the ashes, but it is all I know.  I’m not sure where or even if the ashes are in the bible, but it is my understanding that they serve as a reminder and celebration of human mortality. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of this 40-day period where Christians are asked to fast, except not on Sundays I think, apparently those don’t count. Oh and not real fasting, such as Ramadan, it is more like a New Year’s resolution, but only for 40 days. You can give up soda for Lent or chocolate; it is not like eating nothing from sunrise to sunset, plus it is only 6 days of the week. Like all aspects of religion, this all makes perfect sense when you just don’t think about it:  Jesus got lost in the sand for a month so we put some ashes on our heads and eat a filet o’fish every Friday for a month.  I find it is best not to ask questions, but I’m sure you’re wondering where they get the ashes.  Just so you’re clear they are not actually from dead people; the ashes are typically gathered from the burning of the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. 

So there we were, in line to get some charred palms smeared on our heads while the choir droned out the single verse song “be merciful oh Lord for we have sinned” for 20 straight minutes.  If that was not up lifting enough, I make it to the front and the dude with the ashes-I think he was a deacon- looks me right in the eye and says “repent and believe in the gospel,” and then smeared an ash shaped cross on my head.  I don’t even think that is what they are supposed to say, I think he heard me get the response wrong early on and knew I was a hedon.  It was almost eerie; it seemed so directed.  He looked right at me and told me to “repent and believe in the gospel,” shouldn’t that be a given if I was at the church, how did he know?  I could have sworn they typically said something about the ashes, that would make sense right?  Maybe I was reading too much into this, maybe he says that to everyone. So I whispered to Brian:

 “What did the guy say when he put the ashes on your head?”

“Peace be upon you, may you live vicariously.” 

“What?! There’s no way he said that, that is not even a sentence, are you still drunk!”

“I’m not drunk, I’m tipsy, and I have to pee.”

“Wait until after communion.”

“There is not communion on Ash Wednesday.”

“I’m pretty sure there is.”

“Why wouldn’t they have done it with the ashes, we were already in line once.  Six Sigma in this bitch.”

“Wow.”

For about 6 minutes while Brian took his second bathroom break, I seriously debated repenting and believing the gospel, but I like shrimp, and gay people, and science, and historical context.  So I’ll stick with the blog and maybe give up coffee for the next 40 days.