Spiritual awakenings are still happening today

In America during the 17th and 18th centuries, there were religious revivals collectively called the "Great Awakenings." In school we were required to read a typical sermon by Jonathan Edwards, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

At the 2009 Arkansas Episcopal Clergy Conference, the speaker was Phyllis Tickell. The year before, she had released her insightful book, "The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why."

She charged the clergy to leave our church offices and to spend significant time out in the "other world" listening to those spiritual awakenings that have been and still are emerging.

She was right. There were and still are great emerging manifestations that are challenging and sometimes bewildering holy mysteries of God's Spirit.

These memories bubbled up because on Ash Wednesday, March 1, we entered the season of Lent. The worship service includes the marking on each person's forehead a cross of ashes. While doing so, the minister intones, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

A decade ago, the churches began taking this service outside. This year, thousands of men, women and children participated in this deeply moving ritual in subway and train stations, at malls and town squares, at parks and outside movie theatres, at shopping centers and grocery stores, and other places where people gathered.

When reporters asked participants as they were leaving -- "why" questions, the universal responses were, "It's what I needed" or "It's the right thing to do."

The "why" questions are also important Lenten questions for every individual and for every Christian community. We know the story of Easter, but first there had to be a time for the courageous truth telling, honesty, and a time to ask good questions and seek answers.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in "Learning to Walk in the Dark" that as a child her mother told her, as did most of our mothers, "It's time to come inside because it is getting dark outside." Dark became an image of when bad things can happen unless of course you are inside in the light.

Later she realized all the positive Biblical things things that happened in the dark -- such as the Passover in Egypt, the birth of Jesus and a dark tomb that could not overcome the light of Christ. She realized how important is both the dark and the light.

I believe that people are just waiting for us to be with them face to face outside our too small habitat and wonder with them emerging spiritual realities and be their companions of the Light.

People need us to not be afraid of talking about important things including Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and Easter. They clearly aren't afraid to hear "You are going to die."

They called it "Just what I needed."

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Ken Parks is the former rector of St. Theodore's Episcopal Church in Bella Vista. He can be reached by email to [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

Religion on 03/15/2017