Cindered

Jeff

I was born in Illinois, the alleged "Land of Lincoln." I spent my infancy in the suburbs of Chicago, where I was baptized in a Lutheran church, which basically meant a glorified head-rinse without shampoo.

As a baby, I had no idea what the rite meant, and the only people who would later teach me about God (my parents) would do so in between bouts of alcoholism and domestic abuse. Just before middle school, I moved with my family out into the country, where we attended a small, rural Presbyterian church. Since it was my only exposure to the denomination, I inherited a warped and somewhat unfair perception of the religious group.

Presbyterians believe in predestination, which I thought meant no surprise birthday parties (sounded like a bummer, if you asked me). All I knew of the denomination was this small, mid-western church, which didn't have its act together. I was convinced that Presbyterians collectively didn't know how to clap on-beat, that their sanctuaries were notoriously cold, that being an acolyte was a free "get into heaven free" card, and that all their services were filled with music from an off-pitch organ that the church was too frugal to fix and too set in their traditions to let someone defile the "altar" with a guitar.

I didn't know much about religion, or Christianity for that matter, but I did remember in the Old Testament that altars were where dead things lay. For a church of people that were called the "frozen chosen," it seemed all too true. We were a church of dead people.

Though we had potlucks and Vacation Bible School, we were not living abundantly. While we squabbled over which new pastor we were going to hire and fire within a year, we lost hundreds of chances to share hope with a world that was just as hurt and as dying as our little steepled building. It was sad, and worst of all, I didn't even know it was sad. I kept thinking that if I was good enough at being religious that somehow, one day, I might find the purpose for which I was hoping I was put on this earth... maybe.

Liturgical Christians, including some Presbyterian churches, have this curious tradition of placing ashes on the foreheads of their parishioners during the season of Lent, which is observed as a time of fasting and repentance. The ashes symbolize three things: the dust from which Adam was created, our own mortality as his descendants, and repentance from sin. I remember when I was younger, I would see my mother come home from church, still with the ashes on her brow. Sometimes, she would leave them there all day. It always made me wonder.

I didn't learn this until much later, but what's interesting about the ashes is that, traditionally, they are burned from the palm fronds of the previous year's Palm Sunday celebration. They take the green leaves, which have been used to wave a the coming of the messiah only days before they condemn the same man to die, and they incinerate them.

The leaves burn in effigy of committing our phony religiosity to the flame. It's almost like they are lamenting their own hypocrisy - that although they may appear vibrant on the outside, they are like the green leaves that have been removed from the tree. They are very much dead inside and in desperate need of a rebirth. In order for that to happen, though, you have to take what is "leafy" on the outside and reduce it to cinders. There is no other way to get reborn, and that was a hard lesson for me to learn.

And so, I entered college like a green palm frond - with a frozen-dead, religious spirit. I didn't know Jesus, but I knew so much about him that the invitations to accept such a man were preposterous to me. I knew about the story of the loaves and the fishes, had stumbled over that quizzical hyperbole about the camel and the eye of the needle, and was familiar with all the pictures of a blue-eyed, goatee-wearing dude with kids and sheep always hanging around. What else really was there?

The whole "good news" cliche bored me. I didn't buy the Jesus Freak message that you had to get saved or else you would go to hell. It sounded fabricated and based upon fear. Besides, most of the people I knew who talked like that were getting drunk on the weekends like all the other loser parents I knew in town... or they were negligent landlords ripping off their tenants. I was certain that a life of faith had to be better than that, even if I had to make it up myself.

And so, I was on a search for my own gospel.