Pastor
By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, until you return to the ground;
for out of it you were taken:
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Genesis 3:19
Beloved Community,
February marks the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday. On that day, Christians are traditionally reminded of our mortality in a very vivid way, as the ashes are marked on our foreheads in the sign of the cross. In the sign of the cross we hear the words spoken over us, “Dust thou art and to dust thou wilt return,” says the King James version of the text. Many reject this practice as being overly morbid, however there is more to the ritual of Ash Wednesday than confronting the reality of death. On a more profound level, the ashes teach us about the very path of Lent itself. We are not so much marked for death as we are invited to begin a journey of transformation.
Author Marcus Borg says that this is what the season of Lent is about, about being born again, about following the path of death and resurrection, about participating in Jesus’ final journey. Specifically, some of us may need to die to certain things in our lives–perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives (Yes, you can die to deadness!). It is possible, says Borg, to leave the land of the dead, so the journey of Lent is about being born again–about dying and rising, about mortality and transformation. The pilgrimage is ultimately a journey of self-discovery.
The season of Lent, with its climax in Good Friday and Easter, is about embarking on the way of Jesus to follow the path of mortality and transformation that is at the very center of the Christian life. When you think of it, who among us does not yearn for this? Who does not yearn for a fuller connection to life? Who does not yearn for an identity that releases us from anxiety and self-preoccupation? To be born again, it seems to me, corresponds to our deepest longing. May we, in this Lenten season, experience that internal transformation that is at the center of the Christian faith, and rise to new life and hope, as individuals and as community.
Peace,
Janet
Another “stone to add to our cairn” on our 200th year:
We will this 2011 September be, for the first time, a teaching church.
We are participating in an internship with Boston University
and will have with us this church year for teaching and learning –
Alyssa Lodewick.
Please see her biography below , and welcome her warmly
to Foreside Community Church!
Biography: Alyssa Lodewick
Alyssa Lodewick is a third-year student in the Master of Divinity (MDiv)/Master of Social Work (MSW) program at the Boston University Schools of Theology and Social Work. She comes to Foreside Community Church after wrapping up a summer internship at the C.G. Jung Center for Studies in Analytical Psychology in Brunswick. During the 2010-2011 academic year, Alyssa served as a clinical social work intern at the New England Family Institute in Portland. Prior to that experience, she completed one unit of clinical pastoral education while serving as a chaplain resident at Mercy Hospital.
Alyssa and Robyn, her partner of thirteen years, moved to Maine in 2007. Soon thereafter, Alyssa was hired by the Maine Conference of the United Church of Christ and served as the placement assistant until she matriculated at BU in 2009. Alyssa always has been interested in the intersections of psyche and spirit. Even so, she denied the original call toward ministry that she first experienced in her early twenties and instead pursued alternative career paths. Finally, after more than a decade of working in academia and the nonprofit sector, Alyssa realized that “the call” was not dissipating but was instead strengthening. At that point, she permitted herself to actually listen to what her soul was saying. She re-oriented her life’s compass and started down a new spiritual, educational, and professional road—a road that has brought her here to Foreside Community Church. Alyssa looks forward to getting to know the FCC community and to the growth that all of us will experience together, with the help of God.