---

“Don’t get old,” my grandma used to say. She loved life. As she aged (gracefully), what most slowed her down was her feet. She needed a new pair. Yet she never lost her traveling spirit. I have great memories meeting her at the DeKalb Avenue trolley (eventually bus) stop for a day at Gertz or A&S, two popular department stores. I never remember her buying much. She just loved to “shop,” which I came to think meant just browsing around the store, picking up items of clothing and putting them back on the rack. Boring! I spent most of the day going up and down the escalators. Anything to keep moving. Except for lunch. That was always the highlight of the day. For me and, I think, my grandma as well. I still remember my favorite: “Leo the Lion. Giant hamburger with lots of spinach.” And coffee ice cream.

I hope I am not boring you! It’s just that happy routines from the past bring such great memories. Grandma lived till 88, by the way. She was never bored. Even when she couldn’t get out, she was always making things. She was a great seamstress. I remember seeing patterns of bishops’ miters on her dining room table. My grandpa ran the Ecclesiastical Arts Company, where he basically — with a lot of help from my grandma and his sons — outfitted bishops when they were appointed. I never remember him being bored either.

God is not boring. Anyone with Jesus at the center of their life is in for an adventure and lots of surprises. Read the lives of the saints. The Acts of the Apostles, for example. They certainly had some funny acts, my grandpa once said. In recent decades we have certainly upped our game trying to keep people coming to the church. If we look at the numbers, however, most of our youth don’t seem to be buying it. They can get their entertainment elsewhere, if that’s what we’ve been trying to do. 

In a recent meeting with one of the cardinals in Rome (not Pope Leo!), we were talking about why so many young people seem more attracted to the older liturgical forms. He suggested it may be because of the noise they seek to escape from. The quiet time, the sense of the mystical induced by the incense and reverence, the prayers and chants, more hushed than belted out. Maybe it’s even something more profound than that. More than the ritual itself — however simple or lush — but the sense that this is all about something larger than us. Something not locked down or predictable. Something — or someone — we really don’t know or can’t completely figure out, who is calling us out of the same old, same old that bored (depressed?) people so often complain about.

The Easter narrative is real. Not only because it is something that actually happened, but because it is something that still happens. What is it really about? Well, certainly plenty of surprises. When Jesus rose, no one expected it. The first reaction to the accounts was fear and disbelief. Even though Jesus had repeated, again and again, “the Son of man who will be killed … and rise on the third day …” When it happened, no one believed it. 

Again and again, the disciples kept going back to the tomb. “He is not here. He is risen,” they were told, and “Why seek the living among the dead?” Here’s a radical thought: Have our churches become more like tombs or tombstones? The popularity of processions in some cultures may tell us that God does not need to be locked up in a tabernacle.

We know our Hebrew ancestors, at least at the start, did not see their God as one to be locked up in a temple. Although eventually, they built a gorgeous mansion for God to “dwell” in (against many biblical warnings against it!), the most iconic part of Jewish history was not about God in a place, but God with them on a journey, an Exodus, or escape from the oppression of tyranny and attempts to lock God and God’s people down. And we know what happened to the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.! Yet God and God’s people survive — and thrive. 

We might learn something from our spiritual ancestors. As we enter a diocesan-wide process of spiritual renewal (“Remade for Mission”), a lot of our realty — including many of our churches — will need to be sold or repurposed. Many sites already have been, by attrition, disuse or lacking resources to sustain them. We have parishes less than five minutes apart with churches barely one-third full on Sundays. It makes no sense. It’s not just a priest shortage. It’s a people shortage. And if God does not need to be locked up in a box or a single space, why do we?

My physical therapist and I were discussing the importance of changing things up — old patterns of walking, exercise (or lack thereof) and dieting. She said she has read that a great way to keep the brain young is to take different routes home rather than following the same old patterns. People who stay young at heart, mentally alert and out of the boredom, know how to find great joy in exploring new routes and ideas, planting new seeds.

A good friend of mine sent me a beautiful meme (bottom l.) this morning. It looks remarkably like the outside of a tomb from which a stone has been rolled away. At the entrance, which is as bright yellow as the sun, a little seedling is sprouting. It reads, “We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive, but we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed.”

It’s spring now. Ancient as our faith may be and as old as our warm and cherished memories are of the churches in which it was nourished, it is infinitely more than the monuments and the memories. We are still in the spring of our Christian life. It is time to let some old trees fall and to “make straight the way of the Lord.” Time to make straight the way of the Lord — and plant new seeds.

---