My walk this morning, almost a week after this year’s late Easter Sunday, made me aware of how the spring here in Georgia is already leaving. The dogwoods are almost fully leafed, the blossoms nearly gone, leaving white and pink remnants on the sidewalk. Their turn toward summer is graceful, while the azaleas are brown edged, almost ugly as they end their show.
Six days earlier, I traditionally would have been searching around our front yard for a few cuttings to bring to the flower communion we celebrate in my home UU congregation: mostly on Easter, sometimes later. It is fashioned after the service created by a Hungarian minister who wanted to bring some reminder of natural beauty and goodness to his despairing parishioners in the midst of continental unrest in Europe: unrest that led to war that led to his death at the hand of the Nazis.
From his model and in his memory, we exchange flowers; symbols of renewal, even resurrection.
Congregationally homeless for now, instead of participating in this familiar and beloved ritual, I chose to attend a Sunday Assembly meet-up, part of the new “Godless church” movement that began in London a little more than a year ago. I had been to a couple of the other monthly “services,” held mainly in the meeting room of a medical software company. I knew what to expect: Beatles songs and electronic guitars, short aspirational messages and ice breakers. A brief meditation time. Lots of announcements. A collection basket.
I had come to expect, and was sadly not disappointed by the lack of women or people over 40 up on the narrow stage. I had come to expect and also was not disappointed by the technical glitches, the sound crashes, and the sense of radically laid back disorganization.
If I was going to be there, I was going to wear a bonnet of some sort: a tapestry cloche with a felt flower pinned on, guaranteed to stand out and label me as a Boomer interloper in the sea of jeans and leggings. It was not as if Easter was completely bypassed — the getting to know each other moment involved plastic eggs filled with hard candies and humanist sayings. We were to find the one that matched ours. It turned out that my partner was the Church of God mother of one of the young couples, who had agreed to give up her holiday in the name of family peace and harmony.
But the hymns were missing, the simple prayer of dedication, the parables, and most of all the huge display of garden and grocery store flowers. For this humanist, this a-theist, it was not about the death and rising of Jesus, the beginnings of Christianity, but the shared, embodied recognition of this season that I found myself missing, mourning.
The inspirational speaker at the Assembly was an IT professional who spends his spare time constructing huts for homeless people, tiny dwellings that provide these often shelter phobic men and women with a place to feel safe, to take a break from fear, to store their few things.
It was also, for one mentally challenged woman he told us about, a source of literally planting roots in a patch of public land, perhaps under a freeway overpass. She found a way to make a porch, he said, and then to grow some flowers. Flowers that came up with the same outrageous optimistic glory as the ones in my side bed. That were, for even a brief time, harbingers of hope.
This was my one Easter moment.
Doug Muder says
Last year I suggested a date I might preach at the Unitarian church in the town where I had grown up, not realizing I had volunteered to lead the Easter service. It was good for me; I’d had problems with Easter and needed to think about it.
I found myself wishing that secularists had done as much with the themes of Easter as they have with the themes of Christmas … Scrooge and so forth. (You can see what I did here: http://uuquincy.org/talks/20130331.shtml)
I ended up with the idea that Easter is a time to come back to life, and to welcome others who are coming back to life. (In the same way, Christmas is a time to come back to the community, as Scrooge does.) Lots of people see their lives crash and burn, and then just kind of go through the motions for a while afterward. Easter is the time to think about the ways that you’re going through the motions, and ask yourself if you’re ready to recommit to life. And if that’s not you, then look around and see if it’s anyone you know. It’s a time to invite people back to life, and make a place for them among the living.
Maria Greene says
Poignant, Marti. I attended a Sunday Assembly in Boston the day before Easter. They considerately made it a Saturday Sunday Assembly so those of us who do family things on Easter wouldn’t be inconvenienced. This means I also made it to my UU congregation’s Easter service and sang a ridiculous number of Hallelujahs for an a-theist.
Flower communion is one of those things I think the Sunday Assemblers could adopt with integrity. Just as UUs borrow with impunity (I’ve been to my share of Humanist Seders) why shouldn’t SA borrow the best rituals from UUs? Fear of contamination?
As another 40+ female, I’m going to continue attending to represent my demographic at SA Boston. I brought a friend this time who brought her knitting. We stood out a little (like you did in your cloche-with-felt flower) but if they claim to be radically accepting, let’s give them something to accept. If I had more time and was closer I’d help organize. It’s different than UU but I think it complements it. “Radically laid back disorganization” is a great characterization of the movement and I’m good with that. Innovation one day, tradition the next and trying to mix them up and bring them closer over time. Works for me.
Maria