Lententine's Day
or How to Love Yourself for Real and for Good
Last Sunday at church, we celebrated Dimanche Gras, aka Mardi Gras a little early, because midweek is tough for our far-flung congregation. I passed out these candy hearts to the kids—I’d dipped them into edible glitter on one side to obscure the “YAS Queen” et alia messages. On the other side I had written “Alleluia,” the word we bury from Mardi Gras until Easter, usually on a literal banner in our literal front yard.
“This year, you’re going to bury the alleluias inside your own self,” I told the kids. “They’re going to disappear deep inside of you during Lent, which is a quiet time. It’s a time for praying close attention to your thoughts, feelings, and doings. And if you discover something you feel bad about while you’re praying attention, you can remember that the alleluia heart is in there too.”
I offered a gaggle of our young adults the hearts too, in case they couldn’t make it to the Ash Wednesday service where I’ll give them to the grownups. The ones raised Catholic were agog. “We do Lent here?” The ones raised Evangelical were likewise surprised. “I thought Lent was a Catholic thing!”
I told them a lot of mainline Protestants do Lent. “We made it up, like we made up a lot of Christian traditions–but it’s valuable to have a season that is set apart for a different kind of spiritual practice, deeper self-reflection and awareness. And 46 days is the perfect amount of time to inculcate a new habit. It’s become popular to ditch the ‘give something up’ stuff as negative, and instead ‘take something on,’ but I think both are valuable and instructive.”
Lent isn’t meant to harm you. It’s meant to help heal you, & there are many ways to receive healing.
~Erin Jean Warde
Erin Jean Warde, who wrote a book about spirituality and sobriety I’ve been meaning to read (and will buy right now!) said this on FB: “Lent isn’t meant to harm you. It’s meant to help heal you, & there are many ways to receive healing.”
Taking that lens for Lent, what’s the healing you crave, Beloved? What’s one step you can take in support of that healing? That will tell you what your spiritual practice might be, your own giving up or taking on.
Here’s the Ash Wednesday/Valentine’s Day Mashup homily I’m going to preach tonight at in-person church, in case you want to eavesdrop. You can also watch our separate Ash Wednesday service at First Church Berkeley anytime.
And, randomly, if you’re looking for something wholesome and delicious and healing to do tonight that isn’t church and isn’t something capitalism is trying to sell you, you can rent this amazing doc (available tonight *only!*) about Black people and psychedelics that was made by a new friend, Ayize Jama-Everett! It’s profound, funny, and beautiful. It’ll open your heart. Which is a good start for a healing Lent.
Homily after my sign-off!
Christlove,
Molly <3 <3 <3
Ash Wednesday 2024, First Church Berkeley UCC
Luke 10
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
~
You may have seen one of the many Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday mashup memes going around the internet this week. One includes Dwayne Johnson aka the Rock asking a blonde protagonist what she’s doing for Valentine’s Day. She says, to his horror, “rubbing dirt on people’s faces and telling them they are going to die.”
The expert in the law stood up to ask Jesus how to live forever. Jesus turned the question back to him. The answer was both profoundly simple and utterly impossible: love God with everything you’ve got, and love your neighbor as yourself.
This Lent our theme is “Hard Asks.” And tonight we start with the hardest ask. Not love God. Not love your neighbor. On this Valentine’s Day, we are asking you to love yourself. Truly, madly, deeply.
Don’t love a someday you, a more perfect or together you. The you you’ll be when you finish your to-do list, lose the weight, when you get the job or the college acceptance or the approval from someone with power over you. The future you who has gotten over this current bout of depression or ennui or fury at the state of things.
Love the you you are right now.
In this church and throughout progressive Christianity there’s a phrase we say a lot. It’s a version of: “You are God’s beloved. God loves you so much, just as you are, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
We say it with alarming frequency, and sometimes we even believe it. Certainly we believe it about everyone else in the room, and occasionally even for ourselves.
Until. Until we mess up. Fall down. Have a rotten day, and act like an a-hole. We carve ourselves up like a Thanksgiving roast–serving up the parts we believe are lovable, shaming or suppressing into shadow the parts we believe to be worthless or disposable. It’s a kind of spiritual pornography, a violence, a vivisection, this division of self from one big beautiful imperfect whole into pieces and parts, some treasure and some trash.
Instead, try this: close your eyes. Say silently to yourself: “I love you, [your name here]!” See what happens next. See if there’s a big BUT. An exception. A carve-out. Maybe more than one. I love you, [your name here]! except for that thing I did that one time, that terrible habit of mine, that way I keep screwing up. I love me but I’m a little crazy, but I can be such an idiot, but I’m such a disappointment, but I’ve peaked and now I’m so much less than I used to be.
(Silence)
Now take that big BUT that you’ve excluded from your love, and place it in your lap. Hold it gently.
Say, “I even love this part of me. I love it because I must. I love it because without loving it, I can’t receive all of God’s love. I love it because without loving it, I can’t truly and madly and deeply love God back, or love any other human the way they deserve.”
You might say: self-love is self-ish. But I’m talking about self-compassion, not self-regard. Self-regard is obsessed with the mirror, both the praise and criticism it delivers. Self-regard is fragile and fleeting and dependent on so many things that aren’t really real.
Self-compassion is: checking in with your whole self, giving all the parts of yourself love, so you can forget yourself again and go back to being madly in love with everybody and everything else.
I’ve found a synonym for self-compassion: God-Esteem. As in: my self-esteem varies from day to day, but my God-Esteem is more reliable. I know God loves me. All of me. All the time.
And because of this, I’m not afraid to die (well? less afraid to die). The teacher of the law who wanted to live forever–that desire for eternal life is about a lot of things, but I think it’s mostly about the desire to avoid judgment, or the desire to avoid becoming nothing. And once you become aware of God’s esteem for you, it begins to wash away the fears of judgment and of nothingness. Because the fragment of God that lives within you–your beautiful unchangeable sparkling core–is forever, and forever connected to others, in right relationship with all Creation.
Self-regard is obsessed with the mirror, both the praise and criticism it delivers.
Self-compassion is: checking in with your whole self, giving all the parts of yourself love, so you can forget yourself again and go back to being madly in love with everybody and everything else.
And now, because it’s Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday together, I’m going to pass around a plate of candy hearts. The message on them is “Alleluia!” You’re going to bury these alleluias for the season of Lent in your own body and soul. Your body will break down the sugar, starch, artificial color and flavor, and turn them into energy and waste. But the glitter, edible as it is, will endure. Forever. May every mirror you glance into for the next 46 days tell you the whole truth about yourself, including this sparkle at the center of your being. And may that sparkle move you to great, greater, the greatest possible love for all Creation.
Thanks for the good thoughts. It helps to include a wider circle - those outside our sphere who we don't necessaarily understand and our own tendencies to fall short - often we've learned habits to try and make the world safer as very young children - they have served a purpose - but to grow past them we have to stop rejecting them and understand that their intentions are basically good, even though the methods and results we need to use now may have evolved to a point where our desired actions are much different. I don't like language of killing off parts of ourselves so much as honoring them and letting their old perceptions and results give way to better actions. That's very much easier said than done as we all tend to pick up on the messages that conquest and violence are like the ultimate in power and sophistication. Often that rejection has unintended consequences for ourselves and even our loved ones, as we may become tyrannical about reform especially in the lives of others. Ideally, we can be firm but gentle and such care helps us to pick up and move forward.
Thank you so much for these wise, wise words. If you can, please change the my email to mctirabassi@gmail.com That's been the email for ten years but my very old hotmail account which has forwarded things for all these years will be stopping.