A Gentle Lent

Elizabeth Esther opened a Gentle Lent link-up on Ash Wednesday.  I was definitely going to link up a blog post.  I always write a blog post for Ash Wednesday.  Lent is my thing.  And then…I didn’t. 

In preparation for Lent, I took a moment of spontaneous solitude on Monday to smudge the house.  It is a ritual that breaks up the heaviness that clogs a space when emotional upheaval has taken place, when unresolved conflict lingers on, when grief and anger become bitterness and rage swept under the carpet.  I knew the house, my life, my marriage, needed some clearing but I didn’t consider how much that twenty-minute burning of dried weeds would exhaust me.  Sure, I have chronic fatigue as a major symptom of my hysterical illness but, holy frijole! was I sick and exhausted afterward. 

Then, of course, because I hate to follow rules and always celebrate moments of breaking them, I threw all dietary caution to the wind on Fat Tuesday, knowing that I was going to begin an even more restrictive food plan on Wednesday.  Wow, did that food mess me up!  Just a little Starbucks scone and latte with milk, some enchiladas for lunch, and popcorn in the evening—regular food, not even a wild and crazy bender. 

So, by Ash Wednesday itself, I lay in bed feeling like I was sackcloth and ashes, no need to put them on.  No post got written, no blog got linked; I didn’t even get out of my pajamas or comb my hair.  By Thursday, I was back on my feet enough to get to Restorative Yoga and to lead the Chant class I have taken on this year but that was it, back to bed I went. Emotionally flogging myself all the while for not having met my own expectations.

Today, I popped over to Elizabeth’s blog to see what other people had written for Gentle Lent.  The first thing I noticed, though it was in tiny print at the bottom of the page, was that the link-up was still open.  A window of Grace! I could still participate even though I was three days late.  Woohoo!

Then I began to read some of the entries.  So many of them spoke of setting intentions and failing to live up to them, as if Lent were religious version of just-hate-yourself-now unsuccessful New Year’s Resolutions.  So many bloggers wrote of their relief that Gentle Lent accepted failure, set up low expectations, simply wanted us to Be instead of Do. 

The proverbial light bulb went off over my head.  Isn’t that what I preach All. The. Time?

Be.

Don’t Do.

Accept what Is and Love Always. 

Let Grace Happen. 

I had to laugh at my own hubris.  I hadn’t failed at Lent on the very first day.  I’d only begun to enter into the liturgical adventure of self-discovery.  Lent itself gave me the gift of falling down on the very first day of trying to Do Lent from my ego self.  Lent gave me the gift of grace, the opportunity to realize my ego had tripped me up once again, the chance to repent, to turn away, from that self-flagellating ego and Be once again.

Falling down isn’t failure.  It is an opportunity to get up, turn away, and walk around the obstacle that caused the stumble.  Transformation occurs the second we turn our face in a new direction. Grace always gives you a second chance.  That’s what grace is. 


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Living in the And

Lent has traditionally been understood as a preparatory time before Easter to participate in the sacrifices of Christ by making some difficult sacrifices of your own--usually involving some kind of fasting (no meat, no fats/oils, no sweets, hence the over the top revels of Fat Tuesday to mark the end of Mardi Gras--literally Fat Tuesday--with the sweet and fatty foods) as well as something unique to the penitent that is given up. By entering into the sacrificial postures, it is supposed to make you more aware of how much more Christ gave up to descend to humanity and be killed on your behalf.

I am not a substitutionary atonement adherent and don't observe Lent with those purposes. I see the death and resurrection of Christ as just another variation of the many springtime renewal stories. Every tradition has something that honors the Life Cycle springing forth at this time of year. Whether it is a Pagan celebration of Earth Day, Chinese New Year, Passover/Easter, everyone has some ritual of honoring that which died in order to generate the new life that sustains us through the coming year.

For me, personally, I am looking at the death of who I was (more accurately, who I thought I was) and the rebirth of myself into who I am becoming. It is a time every year when I consciously try to let go of habits of thought and pre-conceived ideas about who I am, of what I think the world is, of How Things Are. The Lenten period marks a space between the worlds, a gestation as it were between What Was and What Is. Yogis talk often about the Space Between the Breaths. a little death in the middle of the breathing that sustains us. Enlightenment, they say, is to be found in the Space Between, in the And of in-and-out. 

For me, Lent is a conscious Space Between last year and next year. It is living in the And. Recognizing a space between Ending what came before and Beginning the rest of my life.Therefore I take up practices for the Lenten season that will provoke my thinking into that death-and-resurrection, rest-and-renewal, sort of focus. Usually some form of meditation, some form of giving-up, some form of service, or all three.This year I'm attempting all three: a fairly rigorous dietary restriction for the purpose of clearing my mind and entering the hidden depths of repressed memories and emotions, a meditation on my old journals and (unexpectedly) the New Testament book of James, and a creative service by participating in the Religion-Free Bible Project and (hopefully) getting my Heretic blogging back up and running.

It is a hefty undertaking. More than I have attempted before. Given my health ups-and-downs (mostly downs) I don't know how much of my To-Do list will get done. But the honor is in the attempt, in the being willing to place myself in the space, to submit to the process, rather than the perfect execution of the tasks.

Another Ash Wednesday

Another Ash Wednesday.  Another Lent. Another season in the liturgical year to contemplate “what does it all mean” and “how do I live like it means anything at all?”  No matter what Jesus’s followers thought he was all about—and the Gospels record their opinions as all over the map—the events of that fateful Passover had to have taken them by surprise.  Whatever their expectations for the Jesus movement, his execution for criminal sedition was a big game-changer.  Who could have foreseen such an event? (Arguably Jesus, but if so, he didn’t seem to go about making it very clear to even his closest followers.) And having seen their leader die ignominiously, what were they to make of it?  In order to go on with their own lives, how were they to integrate his death into their own personal histories as a meaningful event? 

Eventually, the various atonement doctrines, revisionist messianic prophecies, and the deification of Jesus by the increasingly political church provided catechistic answers to these hard questions.  Ultimately, though, we each have to answer that question of meaning for ourselves just as the original followers grappled with it in the first century.  Each of us must find our own meaning in life regardless of what answers are served up to us by church or culture. 

Lent is a six-week period designed to reflect on what meaning we will give our lives. Two years ago, I began The Chronicles as a Lenten exercise, expecting 40-Days-to-a-Renewed-You.  What I got was a continuing odyssey in spiritual death and resurrection.  I thought that February of 2010 that I was nearly recovered from my then two-and-a-half year struggle with dysautonomia/adrenal dysfunction.  Little did I know I was only beginning a whole new adventure in chronic disease and spiritual health!  Like the first disciples, who could have foreseen how often in the last two years I would beg that this cup should pass from me, how many times I cried out from the depths of my soul for the God who had forsaken me, how close I would come to sighing simply, “it is finished.”

This sojourn in my personal Abyss has been more malevolent than I ever expected, the skeletons in my closet became demons that nearly destroyed my soul.  Not for lack of willingness on my part did they fail; more times than I can count, I pleaded just to die and to let the inner struggle cease.  But God kept waking me up to one more dawn; weep though I did at yet another day of hauling my weary, aching, broken self out of bed.  Grace is a terrible thing.

Lent has come around again. Why am I still here?  What is my purpose in continuing to breathe, to think, to move?  In the last few weeks I have been slowly resurrecting from the ashes of my old dead self, why do I live?  Grace transforms, whether we will or no.  What has grace wrought?  Like those devastated survivors of that crucial crucifixion, I look around me and begin to pick up the pieces of myself that I find and discover that they fit together differently that before.  I am not the same person who went into this grave, who is this new person Grace has borne?

Jesus’s followers began their fateful journey, leaving every part of the lives they knew in Galilee, traveling to another country for a religious celebration, only to find that everything on which they had staked they hopes and dreams was staked instead to a cross as a common criminal. Their lives, their plans, lay destroyed at the foot of the cross that scattered them to the winds.  Grace transformed those shattered people into a force that changed (for good as well as evil) the course of history.  What will Grace make of me? 

Lent. Six weeks to nurture the new healing, the tender green spirit that has sprung new roots into the Ground of my Being.  Forty days to reach for the light, to burrow into the ground.  Who will emerge from the seed of the resurrection?

A Review of the Season

The Chronicles began as a service for the Lenten season, to spend time writing as a means to facilitate contemplation of all my voracious reading.  My appetite for books is huge and often threatens to overwhelm me.  Writing has proven an effective method for slowing down the ingestion enough that much better digestion occurs.  I have felt far more nourished by my reading since I began writing about it than I felt before.

Alright, enough with the digestion metaphor; make the point!  Which is to say that I have succeeded at my goals for this blog so far beyond my expectations that I intend to continue it indefinitely.  The pile of books on, in, under, and around my nightstand hasn’t really gotten any shorter but the turnaround time to the library or used bookstore has gotten a lot longer.  I’m both taking longer to read each book and playing with the material longer before diving headlong into the next book.  No one would have accused me of being a superficial or casual reader before I started writing (well, except when I’d be on a binge of trashy novels) but now I feel I’ve moved well beyond reading to learn and into reading to study.  Reading itself has almost become a meditation.  Writing certainly has.  These are outcomes of blogging that I never expected but for which I am deeply grateful.

I had hoped to rediscover my voice through writing.  For a long time there while I struggled with hypoadrenia I wasn’t able to hold cogent thought in my head long enough to string a sentence together, much less to put paragraphs into sensible essays.  I wondered if I even could anymore.  I am delighted to discover that although I still lack some of the clarity and ability to develop arguments that I used to have, I can once again state my thoughts in a reasonable manner.  I look forward to building my logical left-brain muscles again. I can say with confidence that I am well recovered from the mental state that hypoadrenia left me in and I can move forward into spiritual healing from fundamentalism.  I look eagerly ahead to continued seeking after Truth, knowing that the Divine is always present and ready to be found by all who are willing to look.

A Season of Renewal and Resurrection

Ash Wednesday.  The beginning of Lent.  The end of excess and the start of focused restraint and renewal.  A time culminating with the rebirth of a soul. A very loose interpretation of the meaning and purpose of Lent but the interpretation that gives it meaning to me. 

I laughingly posted to Facebook about my stack of books I wanted to read, wondering if I perhaps had a problem with an excess of research.  Am I addicted to Google? To books? To finding answers to every varied question that passes through my head?  Or do I simply have an inquiring mind in search of a venue for my accumulated knowledge?

My kids suggested that I should give up Google and email for Lent but I asked who would be served by such sacrifice:  my kids, who are old enough to have little need of me beyond driving and dinner?  I, who greatly delight in every new idea to debate, discuss, and develop new questions? My husband, who admits to finding himself applying to all the people he meets in his travels the knowledge I so freely share? Would God be pleased with such pointless sacrifice, made simply for the tradition of Lent?

Or would God find more appropriate an act of service?  I certainly would be better pleased to continue reading and expect that I’ll find greater healing and spiritual growth by writing.  The excess of research may continue but I hope to reap more benefit by distilling some of the morass of ideas into a few new thoughts.  Or at least new questions.  For the next forty days, I hope to write here frequently—daily is my plan, although I doubt I’ll actually post that often.  Forty days of turning the glut of information in my brain into some kind of synthesis. 

By the end of the season, I intend to have regained the confidence in my own voice, the facility of word I used to take for granted.  I pray to be reborn as a person whose authority I respect without needing to footnote my own opinions.