These are a few basic thoughts distilled from our Ash Wednesday ritual. Lent begins on March 5 this year.
Slow down
We need silence to find the spiritual place where Jesus is with us in our suffering and we are with Jesus in his suffering. Lent is the season of silence and solitude — and suffering. Some people will even “give something up” to cause some small suffering to give space where they can experience something more than their usual anesthesia, avoidance or denial. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of our yearly, disciplined journey of repentance and renewal, the beginning of the concentrated season of self-denial and self-giving that feels like suffering but points us toward joy Wednesday we enter the great forty-day fast with millions of other Jesus followers – those living and those who have gone before. God bless you as you take your steps along the way of Jesus this year!
Let’s go as slowly as possible. We need to be quiet, thoughtful, and restful. We must not be impatient. We must not worry if we don’t feel or understand things right away — there are no expectations of Lent except that we seek after Jesus, explore the meaning of his death, and die with him. Paul shares our goal: I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Lent in not the imposition of some demanding God, but in solitude God’s presence will be compelling. One of Job’s friends has it right when he says: God is wooing us from the jaws of distress into a spacious place free from restriction. Let’s see how much we can cooperate.
Continue reading Slow, reflective, imaginative: the spiritual discipline of Lent
I have been looking forward to Ash Wednesday. I live in a societal atmosphere, among many recovering evangelicals, among the high-flyers of Center City, where depression is constantly repressed and the sunny face of an optomistic false self is plastered over everything in order to sell it. I need a good excuse to be my completely needy self — no economic recovery, no fulfilling my promise through education, no making a name for myself professionally, no perfect children, friends, experiences or body, no religious self-justification, just Jesus and me in the desert. Just Jesus and me honestly facing temptation.