I like Diana Butler Bass’s Lenten theme of “empty altars.” It’s a helpful way to think of the practice of Lent, to think about all the things that we put our hearts, minds, and bodies into that will ultimately wear away or be torn down. Things, but also people. Mostly, though, I like the way that she transitions into the theme of “searching for saints.”
It should go without saying (though it’s probably worth saying) that this is not a search for the ultra-pious but for the honest, down-to-earth faithful. One of the things I have enjoyed most about reading over the years, whether books or blogs or Substack subscriptions, is not the ideas or stories that are so valuable and encouraging, but simply finding people who I trust, who I think highly of. As I’ve mentioned before, while there are a few very important ones in my life, most of them are people I have never even met. But I love finding them. Searching for saints is a fun and active project; it is not, as Bass rightly points out, “a deconstruction project.”
Here, Bass says that this is because the deconstructing has already been done. Maybe her readers are already on board with it, but I think this assumes a lot. For some people, deconstruction might look like a view of life and the world that one day just, poof, disappears. For others, it might look like (I’m sure I can’t be the first to use this) a Jenga set, removing things piece by piece and seeing if it (faith) still stands, or whether the removal of some final building block brings the whole thing down—and with a boom rather than a poof. Or, it might be that, however you have or have not understood something called “deconstruction”—whether you had even thought of it or heard of it at all—you did realize at some point that there was work to be done to (re)construct your faith in a way that seems consistent and truthful, to yourself and to others.
Every generation has to ask and answer certain questions for and of itself, and deconstruction might just be the buzz word for this generation’s self-interrogation. I have not spent enough time thinking or writing about it to know exactly where I fit in to the whole thing. Sometimes I read something about deconstruction and I deeply relate. Other times, I hear the word used in someone’s story and I am completely put off by it. With the way that Bass uses it, it’s a mix, but I think I can say that I find at least enough value in it to keep reading.
Take the statues, for instance. This is not a topic that I have ever felt the need to write about, but it’s a good example of these mixed feelings. Bass seems to speak unequivocally about the good of taking down statues, but I’m less sure. I wouldn’t darken the doors of Fox News to save my life, but I liked Charles Krauthammer’s thoughtful take on the statue debate in 2017 (even if it aired on what might be the most thoughtless host-show ever to appear on television). Krauthammer mentions the varying motives behind Civil War statues and monuments, varying motives which he says calls for varying responses. And he goes straight to one that he says might be the most sacred, The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, which bears this inscription:
– NOT-FOR-FAME-OR-REWARD –
– NOT-FOR-PLACE-OR-FOR-RANK –
– NOT-LURED-BY-AMBITION-
-OR-GOADED-BY-NECESSITY-
-BUT-IN-SIMPLE-
-OBEDIENCE-TO-DUTY-
-AS-THEY-UNDERSTOOD-IT-
-THESE-MEN-SUFFERED-ALL-
-SACRIFICED-ALL-
-DARED ALL ~ AND-DIED-
Should many statues and monuments be torn down? Yes. Is the taking down of Confederate monuments de facto a helpful example of the stripping down of “cultural altars”? Surely not. But the point is not to talk about Confederate statues. The point is that the attempt to strip away everything that I view as wrong might itself be just as problematic.
As Bass puts it, “Ash Wednesday invites us to accept this truth of human existence—we are dust, what we build is dust, and sometimes you have to clean out the attic.” She goes on to say that there is a “concurrent truth” to this: “dust matters because it is the very stuff of creation.”
Dust matters. Sometimes I think the act of “deconstructing” forgets this, or loses sight of it. Bass rightly moves straight from the “empty altars” of Lent to asking the question, “What do we do now? What will we fill these empty spaces with?” But I can’t help lamenting just how empty all those spaces are. Surely some of us could wake up and find that we didn’t leave enough dust to work with at all.
There is a very important and concurrent truth to the idea that “dust matters.” Since we are made of dust, we have to remember that dust will never be gone. It’s where we come from and it’s where we go. So eventually, for creatures made of dust, “cleaning” can become deeply ironic and self-defeating. (And of course, an obsession with “stripping the altars” can quickly set up an altar of its own.)
Bass says, “The deconstruction has been done, these shifts in church and community are well underway.” True enough, in some cultural sense, but on the whole I think—I hope—that it assumes too much. The whole of history—world, state, human, church—is dust. Glorious, gritty, gory, gorgeous dust, from one end to the other. Sometimes, I think the altars and the attics are empty enough, and we might all do better to simply search for saints. Let the altars empty and deconstruct and return to dust as they will.