The Liturgical Year – Logic & Imagination

My first Lenten post is here.

These are the indiscriminate observations from days one and two.

Often, I allow dailiness of life to flood in, the tyranny of the urgent family agenda turning me half brain-dead. Just do the next thing, if grumpily.

In The Sign of Jonas, Merton says:

“I ought to know, by now, that God uses everything that happens as means to lead me into solitude. Every creature that enters my life, every instant of my days, will be designed to wound me with the realization of the world’s insufficiency, until I become so detached that I will be able to find God alone in everything. Only then will all things bring me joy.”

1. I SAW MY SHRINK.

The last time I saw her, a month ago, I was so down that she expressed concern. Meanwhile, until late last week I couldn’t even pick up the phone to set up an appointment. Yesterday I was floating; my brain was uncluttered and clear. I was articulate and full of a strong sense of myself. I had a little extra energy and my spirits weren’t clouded by anxiety and depression. Is this a result of the medication change? I have no idea.

I often get an emotional bump from HOPE. I have seen this time and again over the years. There were so many incredible observations with my shrink. I left knowing that I wanted to write them down the got stuck in the snow filled parking lot at Pier 1. By the time I was out of that mess, I didn’t want to see if they had a round table-cloth and in a fit of anger huffily drove home.

2. THE MUNDANE.

My days at home are full of the mundane. Every keeper of a home knows that most things are never finished. The laundry is never done. Bathrooms always need cleaning. The kitchen needs sweeping or wet mopping. You wash the dishes so that you can have room to cook dinner and do it all over again. That’s why I love snow blowing or mowing depending on the season. Jobs that make me feel good—it is finished.

When I got home, I plowed out two driveways (we borrow from a neighbor and it was my turn). My car got stuck again, this time in an icy snow patch in the street in front of my house. I lost almost an hour trying to get myself out and then the generous city employer helped.

Sadly, I blew out my shoulders doing that, more stupid than sad. I’ve had weak shoulders for twenty years. If they get inflamed, they burn and ache all day long, with one special place that I have come to fondly call The Rod. I had to lie immobile or sit for the rest of the afternoon.

3. TIME COUNTS.

Rather than take advantage of the downtime, to read or study or write, I nosed about on Twitter and Instagram, alternating. I do read linked articles but reading on my phone gives me squinting, tired eyes. And my (self-diagnosed) ADD makes it so that I have eighty things open at once. I follow too many writers. I don’t finish things. I’m twittering away my life – pun intended.

4. AWARENESS

Regular readers know that I appreciate the writer, international teacher and Benedictine nun Joan Chittister. She has written more than 30 books including The Liturgical Year. In chapter 17 titled Lent: A Symphony in Three Parts she says:

“Having conquered our impulses for the immediate, having tamed our desires for the physical, perhaps we will be able to bring ourselves to rise above the GREED that consumes us. Maybe we will be able to control the ANGER that is a veil between us and the face of God. Perhaps we will have a reason now to forswear the PRIDE that is a barrier to growth. Possibly we will learn to forswear the LUST that denies us the freeing grace of simplicity. Maybe we will even find the energy to fight the SLOTH that deters us from making spiritual progress, the GLUTTONY that ties us to our bellies, and the ENVY that makes it impossible for us to be joyful givers of the life we have been given.

Lent is the period in which, learning to abstain from adoring at the shrine of the self, we come to see beyond the divinity we have made of ourselves to the divine will for all the world.” (pp. 113)

5. RISE ABOVE.

“There is no way under the sun to make a man worthy of love except by loving him. As soon as he realizes himself loved–if he is not so weak that he can no longer bear to be loved–he will feel himself instantly becoming worthy of love. He will respond by drawing a mysterious spiritual value out of his own depths, a new identity called into being by the love that is addressed to him.” — from “The Power and Meaning of Love” Merton

I’m conscious today of how easily I resent people, especially social circles where I may be forgotten; as much as I am embarrassed by those “high school” type feelings, don’t we all simply want connection? Social media feeds that anger and pride and envy in me.

I’m not sure what kind of distinction I dream about for my writing, nothing specific. As I said my goals are unclear. There’s a chance that I’ll need to go to work outside the home. This came up late last week. And this shook me. I became frustratingly aware of what I had to lose. These twelve years of privilege, I do not have to work for money. I saw my writing life suddenly threatened and had to ask myself how badly I want this. Do I want it enough to get up early or stay up late for it; to sacrifice evenings or weekends to write if I had to work a 9-5 job? Right now my writing is very one offish. I respond to requests, take very little risks, never query, don’t have a writing group, don’t ask others to edit (except Tom.) Haven’t taken further classes to improve. How serious am I? I think I am but I haven’t been behaving that way. If I want to write for certain publications then I have to query and write and send. As if I’m going to be “discovered” sitting here in my den, in Wisconsin.

I am my own worst enemy. Recently, a writer who blogs on Patheos.com asked me if I’d like her to check into their interest in my writing for them. I’m the one that put the question out there but when she took the bait I got scared. I haven’t written her to say one way or another. I’m afraid.

“Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of which we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks–we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.” ― Parker J. Palmer

6. MY BODY.

Another Lenten awareness is that I’m eating an Orthodox fast for Lent, this is my first time. That means no meat (except fish), no dairy or things made of fat from animals. (Additionally no white sugar because why not? It’s a brain drain I learned yesterday.) I don’t eat gluten but I’ve cheated on that. I’m eager to return to the discipline of no wheat, to be honest gluten makes me depressed, foggy headed, and lethargic. At first, I was sure I’d feel deprived. So far I’m not that hungry. I’m aware of a cleansing of body and spirit. I look forward to other observations.

From Isaiah: “If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday.”

7. MY SPIRIT.

I’m reading the four Gospels through over the forty days of lent. The Gospels tell the story of Jesus and that is what I want to know more about. I think my (lack of) prayer life would be changed by truly knowing Jesus. Prayer is communication in a relationship after all.

“Everyone was trying to touch him because the power came out of him that cured their ills.” Luke 6:19-26

I’ve got some ills that need curing.

8. SO FAR.

On this path of slowing down for Lent, so far I’ve seen I’m terrible at it. I’m self-consciously aware that I read my Twitter feed all day long. I dive quickly into FB and out again, because FB makes me feel bad. I post images on Instagram and wonder why I am not liked. I want to sort out why does social media like Facebook make me feel bad about myself? I need to sit with my discomfort. Face it. Own it. Get over it. Do I think I’m a worthwhile person? Do I think I’m a worthwhile writer or photographer? Why seek other’s validation?

The word AWARENESS is sticking with me, nudging and prodding in all the right places.

I read these words somewhere today and jotted them in the front of my prayer-book.

Desire God, make space for God, and remember God does all the work.

Amen.

What about you? What practice are you taking on for Lent. What are you observing as you slow down your days? (One day thus far.) You don’t have to tell me here, just something to be thinking about.

I didn’t grow up observing Lent. Perhaps this is your story too.

Over time I have come to believe that Lent is an extended awareness and a reminder that life isn’t only about Me and Mine.

The word Lent is old English meaning to lengthen. It comes in the spring as the days begin to stretch and elongate.

Traditionally during the forty days of Lent people give something up and there are lessons learned.

I’ll confess to only dabbling with Lent and usually not making it through to forty days, sometimes “giving up” chocolate or some thing that is more of a sacrifice like caffeine. Once or twice I remember giving up alcohol. (That one didn’t last!) Other times I chose sugar or carbs. Turning it into more of a diet. Thinking maybe I can be “spiritual” and lose weight at the same time. The most pious customarily give up eating anything made of the fat from blood animals.

Abstaining at Lent may be an epochal moment in your spiritual journey—changing your spirit and body forever.

The act of giving something up forces a complete revaluation of self. Suddenly life is not about our incessant self-satisfaction. Bringing a reconnoitering of what is Mine and what is Ours, etching on our soul an openness to greater generosity and community. Hopefully one comes to understand the idea that restraint or curbing of the Self is as important as satisfying Self.

As the years go by, I have come to understand more fully that this experience of sacrifice and repentance could be an important part of what it means to be a spiritual person.

And we join an ancient tradition in religious history that is thousands of years old.

III.

The Lenten fast is a part of the liturgical church’s calendar but that doesn’t mean evangelicals need not engage in this important spiritual tradition. Knowing that it is coming up, I wanted to learn more about this Church tradition.

Observed over the forty days before Easter, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It is traditionally a time of fasting and reflection. The last week of Lent is Holy Week. Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent starts, is a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as it is the last chance to feast before Lent begins.

I found it interesting that in order to not waste food, families have a feast on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday to eat up the food that would spoil in forty days. The need to eat up the fats (meat, butter, eggs and milk, etc.) is where the French name Mardi Gras (‘fat Tuesday’) came from. Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday because they are a dish that could use up all the eggs, fats and milk in the house with the addition of flour.

But background should not trivialize out awareness of what this sort of fast might bring to us spiritually. Our bodies and spirits being connected. When we gorge ourselves day-to-day We (the wealthy among us that is.) aren’t as aware of our immense spiritual needs.

IV.

I have been in a long-drawn-out icy season of grief. Not a loss specifically, but a suffering that life sometimes brings; which I have written about elsewhere.

I know intellectually that this dark season cannot possibly stay forever, and joy will come. At least I’m hoping it isn’t permanent. Hoping for healing or at least some movement toward healing. More days than not over these two years (and this decade) life has been filled with depression, fear, anxiety, sorrow and more recently grief. All internal. All inside me.

If you are lost in a Long Winter of Grief, how do you step into the extended awareness and lingering of Lent? When you feel brittle and bent like a reed how do you find Belief again?

All I can reason out is that it is important to make a choice to lay aside this cloak of grief. Though it is obviously not an actual physical entity, some days it feels weighty. Like a somatic struggle of an Other, it is on me, pulling at my flesh and spirit.

The wise and brilliant Joan Chittister says Lent is a growing season.

It doesn’t happen to us. She says, “It is at most a microcosm of what turns out to be a lifelong journey…”

Perhaps what we need annually on this faith walk is to confront our absorption with Self, which is “conscious and purposeful.” If it is a growing season as Chittister says, this must help us handle the rest of our life.

Our lives in the West have become so trivial and pedestrian. We go about them mostly focused on our own pleasures (Or am I the only one?) Perhaps in this next season, whether you fast for Lent or run in the green grasses of Spring or simply experience a greater awareness of life’s renewal, ask yourself–what’s important? Perhaps renew your commitment and passion to that over these coming days.

So, out of a need to declare the end of This Thing Grief. Or to grow into what it means To Carry Grief On, if that is required. I have chosen to take up a fast over the forty days of Lent. I anticipate a great internal struggle, the voice of Self telling me I cannot make it. And even as I fight inertia and hunger and disbelief, I choose to believe in what I cannot see. I resolve that I will find something that I don’t yet have words for and cannot explain.

In the end that is Faith.

Isn’t that all each of us can do? To remain Open, Extended and Aware in this season of longer Light and Hope. For life is not all about joy. It is also about the power to endure and to Believe.

Sources:

–National Catholic Reporter, Feb. 23, 2001. See more.

–The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister (Thomas Nelson)

–I also read this from BBC.

In 2014:

Shrove Tuesday is March 4^th
Ash Wednesday is March 5^th
Lent is March 5^th – April 19^th
Holy Week is Apr 13^th – 19^th
Maundy Thursday is April 18^th
Good Friday is April 19^th
Easter is April 20^th

Other things I’ve written about Lent.

Lent: My agenda or God’s; Perfect Practice: A Poem; To Lent or Not to Lent: That is the Question; What is Lent Anyway, Besides Strange; {Lenten Series: Winter Slowly Recedes (Poem)}; {Lenten Series: If You Were Homeless}; A Prayer For Lent; {Lenten Series: Thou Mayst in Me Behold}

Tag: The Liturgical Year

An Extended Awareness: Some Thoughts on Lent