Strange Rituals and Cheat Codes

This last weekend, my wife and I said goodbye to the aging minivan that had been a fixture in our family for the last decade.  It was a Honda Odyssey, of course, and just as it had replaced the decade-old Honda Odyssey that came before it, so too was it replaced by a decade-newer, lower mileage used Honda Odyssey.  

I mean, I'd been hoping for a midlife convertible, but danged if minivans aren't just so relentlessly useful.  Where once it was for carrying kids and stuff, now it's for carrying elderly parents and stuff.  

The Van is dead, long live the Van.

The new van is a 2023, with just under 31K miles on it, and that means...even though it's a lower trim level...that it's brimming with features that are new to us.  Like, say, auto start/stop, that unjustly maligned system that saves owners five to seven percent at the pump.  I mean, sure, if you've been bought by the oil industry, it's a bad thing.  But for anyone who cares about pinching nickels, it's a great feature.

If it works.  Which it did not, not for the first few days of driving.  

Every time the engine should have shut down at a stop, it didn't, and instead flashed an alert that the "system wasn't charging."  We'd noticed it during the test drive, but figured it would resolve.  It did not.  It kept flashing the error, even after forty minutes of driving.  Even after an hour.  The engine was warmed up.  The alternator should have charged the battery fully.  Which meant that something somewhere was wrong.

There's a warranty on the vehicle for the first month, but I really didn't feel like taking it in if another solution could be found, so to owner's groups I went.  There, I found the usual kvetching and complaining and frustrations with dealerships.  Mechanics seemed at a loss, as did the manufacturer.  

But in all of that, there were claims of a strange and magical solution.

An owner by the name of BadWolfOdyssey (A Dr. Who reference, I assume) had discovered how to get the system working again, without a trip to a mechanic or dealer.  Dozens of commenters sang the praises of the method, swearing it worked perfectly for them.  

Here's what they did:

1. Drive the Van for fifteen minutes.  
2. Stop in a parking lot, checking that as you do so the error message is showing.  
3. Turn off the Van.  
4. Pull the hood release latch and open the hood.  
5. Get out, and fully prop the hood.  
6. Then get back into the Van, close the door, and turn it on again.  
7. A "your hood is open" alert shows.  
8. Turn off the engine, get out, and go shut the hood.  
9. Return to the Van, close your door, start it.
10. Hey presto, the system will work again. 

That sounded as mechanical as standing on one foot with your finger on your nose and saying "Start/Stop" seven times while hopping in a circle.  It felt like a secret cheat code for a video game.   It was wibbly wobbly, as one might expect from a Dr. Who enthusiast. 

I tried it on the way home from church on Sunday, and it worked like a charm.

Why?  It's not clear.  It likely interrupts whatever software glitch causes the error code in the first place, in the same way that breath control exercises can prevent hiccups.  Some sensor doesn't pick up a necessary state for reactivation, and the system locks, until you do the silicon age equivalent of giving it a good whack in just the right place.

It was, whichever way, a little bit delightful.  

If only there were similar solutions to other problems, ritual movements and arcane positionings that would reset the deeper failings in our glitchy human code.

If only.

Mercredi Des Cendres

On Wednesday, as the day waned, I found myself preparing to lead a service that I've never actually attended myself.   My home church hadn't made a habit of Ash Wednesday practice when I was a laddie. The congregation I interned in didn't do it, either, not when I was there.  

And for the last eight years, I was part of a church that was moving away from seasons of liturgical awareness.  There were no holy days, because every day was the same, and every worship the same.  By the time I left, the will of the collective had rendered even Easter almost indistinguishable from any other Sunday.

It worked for them, I suppose, and that I sometimes found the absence a bit spiritually dreary was just my own bias.   Those who observe one day as holier than another and those who say all are the same need to just be chill about it, bro, as the Apostle Paul once said.

When I started up in my current ministry, I discovered in that they hadn't observed Ash Wednesday for decades.  But...perhaps in response to my craving for a counterbalance to years of growing sameness...I found that I was sort of up for it.  As were they.

So I went about figuring out how to do it.  I favor brevity in worship, and quiet, and so I ditched the idea of an extended homily and decided simply to do a bit of semi-Socratic question-and-answer about the purpose of the event at the beginning.  The music was a pair of songs from the Taize community, simple, spare, and gentle.   The prayers were right straight out of the Book of Common Worship, gracious and solid and accessible.  The reading?  Just one, right from the lectionary.

Coming up with ashes posed something of a conundrum, as the traditional Palm fronds from the prior year were nowhere to be found.  Where to come up with ashes that bore some sacred meaning?   Just torching a few newspapers seemed too functional.   Fortunately, my recent ritual disposal of a well-loved Bible providentially supplied that need.

That day, I found a metal bowl, and mixed the bible-ash with olive oil.  With light fading, the little sanctuary was prepared.   Candles were lit.  The lights were dimmed.   It wasn't packed, not at all, but my initial assumption of only a dozen souls proved well off.   It was a healthy gathering, at least thirty strong.   It was also widely mixed, drawn from all generations, young and old, children and youth and parents and grandparents.

When it came time for the imposition of ashes, I found...well...it was one of those moments.  It felt different.  Sacred.  Special.   Here I am, touching my forefinger to the forehead of all these people I've come to know.  It is an intimate action, touching another being.  We who live sealed in cars and across the mediating distance of cyberspace can forget this.

And so as they came forward singing, I began marking them, slowly, no hurry, with the sign of the mortality of our Teacher.  To each face, I spoke the same words, drawn from our ancient tradition.   "You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

But with each different face, I found that the same words rang both true and unique.  I spoke it to the soldiers, returned from serving in a war zone.  I spoke it to the widow.  I spoke it to the mother.   I spoke it into the bright eyes of the young.  I spoke it into the smiling upturned face of a child.  All different, yet all sharing that same nature and destiny.

I felt deeply aware, in that moment, of my own mortal life, shared with every pair of eyes that met my own.   I also felt, in that connectedness, the imperative of living into the grace we've been taught.  It felt, for lack of a better word, holy.

It only lasted twenty minutes, and then we all moved out into the peculiar warmth of that February night.   But if a time is set aside as sacred, duration means less than the moment of Presence.  

Confirmation and Membership

One of the great laments I hear from my fellow Presbyterians is our seeming inability to get young folks to hang around. We baptize 'em, raise 'em, confirm 'em, and once we send 'em off to college, we never see them again. Well, maybe on Easter and Christmas, when they show up with their folks with a slightly awkward look on their faces. They do that until they can move out and/or find a job which allows them to pay off the $75,000 in debt they racked up getting their bachelors degree in Postmodern Semiotics from a prominent private liberal arts college.

I hear Target might be hiring. Man, it's tough to be young these days.

Part of bleeding out, I think, comes from the whole approach we take to the "confirmation process." In it, we bundle a group of teens together. Up until this point, they've been a little sub-group of the church, carefully segregated from the adults. They're kids, after all. They do kid stuff, crafts and CE and lock-ins and little mission projects. They hang out with other kids, under the charge of someone who focuses on kids.

We make them take a class on the essentials of Christian faith. We declare proudly that they are affirming their commitment to become a full member of the church. They stand before the whole congregation and affirm their baptism, confirming to one and all that they are, finally, a fully fledged member of the church that has been their home all their lives. There is much celebration, and possibly a bowl of tasty punch.

Then...they go right back to being treated like kids again. It's right back to the same old thing you were doing before. It is empty ritual. There is no meaningful life transition after confirmation. Nothing changes in the way you are expected to live within the church, in a way that totally [poops] all over the purpose and point of confirmation. It's like having to show up to do senior year again after graduating from high school. It's like sleeping alone again on the night after your wedding.

The whole thing is a sham.

I'm trying to shift that a little at my church. The first step is not teaching a confirmation class.

We have a new members class. Period. If you're a teen who's ready to become a member, then you get to have the same experience as older folks who are also joining the church. You get to hear about the faith journeys of your elders. You get to ask your own questions, to surface the struggles you have. You get to be treated as if you are a young person making an important transition into an adult faith. You get to be taken seriously.

That seems important, somehow.