Stumbling Through Lent

                                                   photo by Georgie Pauwels / flikr

 I've been pretty blog-absent for weeks.  Inundated by the too-muchness out there. I keep vowing to quit reading and listening to the news. I have failed miserably. I keep sneaking back in to hear where all hell is breaking loose these days. Healthy? Not. Yet as I slowly make my way toward Holy Week I find myself needing help. All I can get. How about you? 

So I read some things that keep my head above water...most of the time. Obama's autobiography which I finished and it is long--has been a help. The Lectionary which I have read on and off--especially Jesus' words and deeds in Matthew and the Psalms remind me of what is important all over again. I find myself whispering name after name of those in trouble. I've fallen back on remembering some of the hymns that I remember from the beginnings of my faith journey. I even ordered the old green Broadman Hymnal from 1940 that took me way, way back to those early pre-adolescent and adolescent days when some of those gospel songs were a tie that still binds me. "I have to follow Jesus." "Into my heart, into my heart Lord Jesus." "Have thine Own Way." "I have Decided to follow Jesus.' "Blessed assurance...Jesus is mine..." "Just As I Am." "At the Cross"  "Breathe on Me." My list seems endless. But as I remember these songs and others tears sometimes come to my eyes. 

One of the articles that has lifted me up is from Onward/Outward.org. It comes every day. And this wonderful piece on Lent and "Giving Up" spoke to me just this week. 

Giving Up It has now been over a year since the whole world, and my life along with it, changed in response to the pandemic. Perhaps the biggest change for me is simply the realization that it is truly impossible to know what the next year—or even the next day or minute—will bring. I still make plans, of course, but as I do so, I always have a heightened awareness that all plans are provisional, that anything can change at any moment, that I might have to give up everything in an instant.  In a recent spiritual report, I confessed that that I had given no thought at all about what intentional changes I wanted to make for Lent. Having given up so much for so long, the thought of giving up something else for Lent seemed ridiculous. Taking on some new spiritual discipline seemed equally absurd, if not impossible. Hadn’t this whole year been an extended spiritual discipline of looking for things to be grateful for while restraining my resentment at being unable to keep up with my comfortable routines? Hadn’t the whole winter, at least, been a long slog of staying indoors except for a chilly hour of outdoor exercise, of never sharing a meal with friends or hugging people I love, of fear that I might never see my distant children or grandson in person again? Now, as the weather begins to warm, tender green leaves are appearing on the tips of tree branches, the yellow heads of daffodils are nodding in every garden I pass on my morning walks, I’ve gotten fully vaccinated, and I’m starting to have hope of something resembling normality, Jesus asks me to hate my life in this world in exchange for eternal life in the realm of God.* What? Hate my life, just I’m looking forward to enjoying it again? Jesus, what can you possibly mean by this? But then, I remember the guy who has somehow made it alive through a long, cold winter of sleeping in the doorway of the church at the end of my block, and all the people like him who have no warm, comfortable homes in which to hide from the pandemic. I think of my friend whose spouse of many years succumbed to COVID last week, and all the people who, like her, have lost partners, children, siblings, and friends and now must carry on without them. I think of everyone who lives in the shadow of racism, of war, of abuse, or all the other terrors that humans inflict on one another, on top of everything else they have given up in what seems like an entire year of Lent. And when I contemplate all that others give up daily, I give up, too. I give up my right to my comfortable life. I give up my resistance to change. I give up my desire to have everything my way. I’ll probably take it all back again in another minute, but in this moment, in this eternal now, I want to give up everything, and follow Jesus. *John 12:20-33 -Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church And I bumped into Ann Patchett's wonderful story-essay about this woman who has helped to shape her life. I recommend it to everybody. harpers.org/archive/202/01/these-precious-days. It's long and you will wish it would not end. Some days I still find it hard to follow Jesus but I'm still on the road. Easter is just week's away but we have not gotten there yet. And so as I still keep at it--surrounding by the grief out there and the pain and the losses of so, so  many. "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."                                                    photo by nikos viotis / flikr                                                  --Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com