Days of Gray 4 {Lent Begins}

I had these grandiose plans of writing several posts about the practice and growing interest or re-discovery of Lent,especially in  less orthodox circles. But as seems to be happening more often than not lately, my ideas were waylaid by travel and health concerns that needed attending too. If there is no other sign of growth in me than this though, it is enough-- that I am less bothered by my waylaid plans than I used to be.

So Lent began and I was holed up in a hospital room, but grateful still to be there. It's funny how Lent is a season of preparation, but the more that you look forward to it, the more you spend time preparing for this season of preparing! So even though I was alone with my child in a city far from home, with no church to attend and no community arround me to engage with, I was ready to begin.

Today, I want to just share a few simple reasons why I think the practice of Lent, on a personal level, can be so helpful and important. It seems like with most things that really change and affect us, time is needed. That is the first idea behind Lent, or any "season" really. It affords time to think and mull over, to give space in your life and your heart and your soul forthe weight of important things to sink in and root themselves. Often, we come to Easter Sunday and either glide through it unaware of how flippantly we've treated the greatest celebration of our faith, or we try to engage but feel disconnected and rather disappointed in ourselves for our lack of enthusiasm- though outwardly we give lip service to this most "glorious" of days.

I think Lent can be a real remedy to both of those problems. It gives us time to pepare. But more than that, it can be a transforming time in and of itself. Any time you choose to offer yourself in a posture of humility and discipline yourself for the sake of growth, a change is bound to take place.

Traditionally, Lent has included certain disciplines such as self-examination and repentance (which come about through Scripture meditation, and prayer), fasting, prayer, and meditating on specific portions of God's Word. We joke about what we are "giving up" for Lent, but the practice of fasting is a very real and practical way of limiting ourselves in some outward physical way, in order to make room for an inward spiritual humility. I have never been good at fasting. This year, I thought long and hard about some ways (being very pregnant) I could attempt to fast from things that would be meaningful enough to me to help me get in this posture of humility. One way, among a few- is what those empty coffee cups are about up at the top of the post.

Perhaps one of the often missed and significantly important parts of Lent is the action steps that are to be taken as well. It's not just about self denial and increased prayer times. There are disciplines of increased giving, acts of generosity, sacrificial caring for those in need. Often the combination of fasting from something that you spend your resources on can also be turned into ways you can increase your giving to others. This is also not an easy one for me. It takes some thought- and the idea of sacrifice, however noble is not one easily swallowed when it comes right down to it.

But all in all, I think of Lent as like a gift. We are people made for seasons. We don't live our lives on a flat line, we need the troughs and valleys, the ceelbratory times as well as the ordinary . Lent and the Easter Triduum (from Maundy Thursday to Resurrection Sunday) are one of those heightened seasons and in the pattern of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus we can walk a road that leaves our clay pots glowing brighter with the radiance of our Savior.

.........................................

This year, I have thoroughly enjoyed and found helpful the book by Bobby Gross called Living the Christian Year, which gives helpful background to the different seasons and traditions of the church calendar, as well as weekly devotional guides and Scripture readings.

Also:

Bread and Wine : Readings for Lent and Easter 

Lent and Easter Wisdom from Henri J. Nouwen

But to be honest, sometimes too much of a good thing is not a good thing and I try to just read out of onlyone resource per year.

Days of Gray 2012

The holidays of both east and west are over and all the festivity has been packed, or swept away. The darkness of early morning no longer holds its promises of the coming light of Advent. Routines are back in place, but the sun still hides from us. These are the long winter days in our corner of the world—the Days of Gray.

Into the cold and colorless sky walks Ash Wednesday, on February 22^nd this year. It is an appropriate name for the opening day of an appropriate season because it begins us on the long march of death. Not just an aimless, depressing march, it is the Lenten walk through death and into Life-- the resurrection of the earth that has been submerged and shut up for so many months, which echoes the celebration of the Resurrected God-man, the Savior of the dying world.

It has been said somewhere by someone that we can endure anything, so long as whatever we endure has meaning. Every year, I enter these months and the challenges I face are different and the same. But if I choose to sit awhile, and let the season have its course, if I enter into the meditations and remembrances of centuries that have passed before me- step by little step the Gray Days can become infused with prismatic depth. So, increasingly the practice of Lent has become vitally important to the yearly rhythm of my mind and soul, and beyond that the practice of seeing through the Gray has become a living necessity.

The seeing for me cannot be merely about finding a photo each day that expresses some hint of color magically found in the bleakness of midwinter weather, or about naming three things I found to enjoy and offer thanks for. But neither can it be a singular Scripture or quote floating rapturously through my mind but untethered to the muddy footprints of my day, the ones I am pounding out in the flesh and bone of hours and minutes. *

Somehow, the two practices of seeing with the eyes and seeing with the soul must connect, weave, wrap their existential and physical arms around each other and whether in harmony or discord- they must meet. They must feed off of and into one another so that they can do what they were always meant to do—keep us whole, keep us healthy with Image-bearing humanity.

This is the daily challenge for me as a person- at once both an earth dweller and heaven-seeker as a floundering Jesus-follower. This is my meager explanation for an artistic little exercise called, Days of Gray. Words and thought and image—it is all combined—and if you like you can try to follow (or join) along as I post bits and pieces here.


*I don't mean to sound pretentious, or high and mighty in some sort of way that says I am a deeper thinker than mere thank-you lists, or posting a photo a day... but more am trying to express that any one of these things alone has not helped me much in the recent year, and I want to leave the boundaries open to include a variety of all of them- which is more the way my mind, and I think most people's minds, works anyway.

Good Friday Thoughts On What Looks to Be a Bad Weekend

A repost from the archives... last year at this time I was in Cairo walking the Lenten path to Easter with a group of students on a trip for Model United Nations. This year we are home and tomorrow is the Memorial Service for our dear friend's son who died here just a few weeks ago.

Today I stand in a land where nearly three thousand years ago a bruised and battered nation saw a miraculous deliverance out of a dark and brutal enslavement and into the shining glory of freedom. I walk on sand and look up at a sky that could have seen the same footsteps and felt the gaze of another Foreigner who came to  live and walk among us.

Yesterday was the first of four conference days we came all the way to Cairo to take part in. That means for now, the sightseeing is on hold. The issues being discussed at this conference by hundreds of high schoolers from all over the world are swirling around in my head as I also try to reflect on the significance of today... it is Palm Sunday, the first day of the final week leading up to Easter.

The moon has risen warm and bright, full and luminous like  a freshwater pearl dropped kerplunk in the middle of the deep midnight sky. It is a vivid reminder of the truth that surrounds me: the world is very dark. There is beauty there, the remnants and glimspes of it so wonderful that sometimes you can almost forget the burden of pain that we all live under. But in spite of all that reminds us of joy, we don't escape the reality that this world, and each of our lives, are shadowed, darkened, marred by all that destroys what we long and hope for in life.

I sit in a city full of people living in buildings that are crumbling, crusted with dirt and surrounded by piles of  trash and refuse from its inhabitants. I sit in a lavish hotel with marble floors and bath towels the size of my living room and listen to passionate debates about issues like genocide, human trafficking, violations of treaties, civil wars, and thre rise of nuclear powers. I see the effects of poverty, corruption and human fallenness all around me. The cries for collaboration, peace, and mutual consideration seem to fall dead and silent on the floors of high walled conference rooms. They are necessary talks, but will they truly bring about the "hope for a better tomorrow" that these youth dream of?

As I return every day to the comfort of my hotel room and look out onto the scene of depravation and struggle, knowing its sorrow is known to millions of people in every nation on earth, the darkness can seem to close in. I listen to the heartwrenching issues and feel overwhelmed, hating the small feeling of problems so large and the heavy burden of my small, protected life. It is easy to look out and ask, "Where is He?"

He was here. He came into the darkness but the darkness has not understood it. Nevertheless, He came still. He entered our darkness and broke its power over us. Some can see it  and believe, others cannot or have not. It is a thing of faith- for we are faith creatures. But it will not always be this way.
This is the beauty of the Easter preparation, of enjoying the season of Lent as it leads you through the Word and gives you time to think about all that this great moment in history, the Resurrection, means for us. The world can seem so dark to me, but the Light of the World stepped down into darkness, and madea way for us to be free. This Friday we will remember the darkness that Jesus friends and followers felt as all they had believed and hoped for seemed buried and dead with the broken body in the grave. But in the early light of a Sunday sunrise, the light of Truth will remind us again that though all seems lost, we know for certain who is Victorious, and who is working even now in the midst of all that still remains broken. He is making things new, and He will make all things new when the time is right.

Tomorrow we head back to the conference rooms and delegation proceedings. It will be Monday and the streets outside will be the same as they were today. But I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able... because He was stronger than the grave, and the death that could not hold him.

May you rejoice in the Light that came, comes, and is coming into your darkness!

Eyes Wide Open

{a sweet and innocent stare from the baby of my good friend}

Eyes wide open, like a deer in the headlights, this is me right now.

Standing in the cross hairs of Tsunami devastation and Lenten meditations on caring for the needy and oppressed, crumbled by news articles of wanton neglect and shameless aversion of justice, grieved by hurting friends who are missing their babies, and little girls who are missing their mothers, angered by the tragedy of a new friend who was tricked by an agent when coming to China and ended up working for months without pay, holed up in a remote part of China in horrible living conditions. And that's not to mention the relentless oppression and violence that contiues in places like Libya, or that has been going on for decades in Zimbabwe.



Headlights. Deer. Me.

This morning as it all weighed down, I started to work in the kitchen-- setting yeast to rise for bread and milk to curdle for cheese making, slicing squash to roast in the oven and mixing oats with nuts for granola... when suddenly I looked around, realizing I had about six projects going at once in my closet-sized cooking space, and muttered to myself, what is going on??

The half crazed, half lucid muttering continued on for awhile, my hands punching hard into the soft dough, pulling pans out of the oven, stirring the steaming milk, watching a floury crust form on the rim of my daughter's face.

Is it just that this is my one piece of terrain I can do something with? Out there- so many problems, heartaches, needs, decisions- and all things we as people, me as a fellow human- are called to act upon. Yet, none of which I can do anything about.

I feel much like that baby up there: arms so short, seeing it all but unable to comprehend and even less able to act with any real or helpful capacity.

Most of the time I worry that I do far too little. Crippled by cynicism or a distaste for cliche responses to poverty- I seem to have relegated myself to the corner when jumping into the ring seems to be what is called for. Feeling cut off and minimized by my family, lifestyle, abilities, proximity and what have you, I fear I have sloughed off any sense of responsibility to fight and care for the oppressed, the needy, the imprisoned, the hurting.

I suppose part of what I want to understand is just what chunk of terrain is mine to care for. No one man can bear the weight of the world, and to bear and care for one small chunk is each man's calling. I wonder... I don't know, but maybe a life of true charity and generosity will enlarge that chunk whenever a need is pressed upon it, or grows from within it. Because sometimes it seems like all you can do is bake the bread in your kitchen, and feed it to anyone who has need of it.  

the vioLENT bear it away

If you read her, she will stick to your bones. But first, she will burn away your flesh. It would seem a timely reading for Lent then, the season of ash heaps and dwelling in dark places. The Lenten season and the works of Flannery O’Connor, a Southern Catholic novelist whose oft misunderstood body of writing is deeply grotesque and violent, are both repelling to the first touch; the lips singe and the taste is bitter, unwanted. But swallowed down, taken into the whole of things, into the whole person, this tandem pair of observing Lent and reading O’Connor can absorb into the blood like liquid life — allowing you to see, not clearly or all at once, but into the distance, to things that are hidden, the stuff of prophets.

Flannery O’Connor wrote stories that explored the very worst in humanity. She was interested in that moment when grace is offered, but often rejected. She writes, “For me [the gravest concern] is always the conflict between an attraction for the Holy and the disbelief in it that we breathe in with the air of the times.” Her stories are violent and dark, the grace moments hard to see and understand. At first reading, you may wonder if the descent is worth the affliction. But wait for it...

to read the rest of this article, click over here

Days of Gray :: 23 {last one}

Today the sky was decidedly blue, and when The Man came home from work the sun had just dipped below the horizon... which meant it was still light out and we were all out there enjoying the lengthening hours before darkness, which seemed fitting in an ironic way-- because tomorrow Lent begins.

Lent. That season celebrated by the Church since its earliest days, and one I am growing to understand and appreciate, though the trajectory of my own history and faith heritage has for centuries and a variety of reasons not recognized these weeks as legitimate practices. I understand why, and I think it helps to see some of the flow of thought that brought it about... so that instead of criticizing I can merely see things anew from the lens of time and place that I inhabit, with the work of the centuries resting underneath me.

The centuries are there though, and they seem to point to the goodness of a time set apart, even if it is to sit in darkness. So tomorrow it begins... as the days grow increasingly longer and the rest of the world begins to awaken, we grow dark. The Light is going out of the world, shrouded by the cross-beams of a tree. It is not the end of the Story, but in order to know the good ending, you have to start with the very bad beginning.

 "And that is what Lent is, a time to reckon with the reality of darkness and death. We do so with hope, beacuse this season of darkness ends in Easter, in resurrection, in new life. But we can be raised to new life only if we have first died to the old one. That is the challenge-- and the gift-- of Lent."

-Kimberlee Conway Ireton,

The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year

I don't think it will be all gloom and doom. In fact, I get strangely excited about this time of year. I think it is because, in a very practical way, giving up simple things and thinking intentionally about other areas creates space for God to work. It doesn't have to be fantastical work either, sometimes it just allows you to see things clearer, the way they really are, and to draw closer to him.

And just in case you were thinking I am Ultra-Spiritual-Woman by being so into Lent, I want you to know I think Lent is for the exact opposite... the Un-Spiritual, the ones who are needy and unable to do anything (like fast) with success. Lent is for you, for me, for the stragglers and the proud... all of us in need of some soul searching and the Light at the end of the tunnel.

why else do we Live?

And so today is Easter. The day of days, to remember the moment of all moments, when the powers of death were swallowed up in the light of an empty tomb. I have spent the last several weeks in preparation for this day, and it has helped me immensely. Perhaps it prepared me more than I could have realized, for today was anything but a festive day.

I remember as a college girl, enjoying the sunrise services deep in the heart of Philadelphia, the full brass ensemble echoing through Rittenhouse Square as pigeons pecked through the cobblestones and sparrows twittered cheerily in the cherry trees. I remember sitting up on the grassy rise in the backyard of my childhood home, wrapped in blankets, chomping away happily on warm muffins and hot chocolate as the sunbeams rose and we listened to the marvelous story. I am sure today all over the world there were cathedrals and high school gyms ablaze with the sounds of worship and thanksgiving, pomp and celebration. But today, we saw none of that.

Instead of a sunrise service, we were cuddled on the couch reading the Story together. Instead of community of worship, I was trying to unpack with a feverish daughter on my chest. Instead of the sound of choirs and congregations crying out with praise, my lone and simple voice rocked sickness with resurrection lullabies. Instead of an Easter feast with friends and family gathered ‘round, there was peanut butter and jelly, and rice for dinner, with a whimpering, sweaty brow tucked tight against my arms. It certainly wasn’t the festive celebration I would have planned or that I can hope for again come another year, but in many ways it was just what has been planned for all along.

I’ve been reading Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. It is such a beautiful book, on so many levels. If you haven’t already, please, please read it if you are able. This time around, a new voice has stood out to me: the simple, quiet housekeeper who lets out rooms to the suffering minister who has come to Johannesburg to find his wayward son. She is forever serving, allowing Kumalo to bring his prostitute sister and her small son in from the streets, then allowing him to bring yet another young girl his son has made with child. She cares for these girls, feeds the entire group, covers Kumalo with her prayers and her daily small kindnesses. Three or four times throughout the story, she is thanked. Each time, she simply says, “It is for this we were born” or, “why else do we live?”

I keep thinking of her response, her way of living, and I am brought low.

Broken and spilled out. Wounded for our transgressions. With his stripes, comes our healing. His was a life poured out, a cup offered up, a sacrifice laid down.

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Then he turns it on us to do the same. Powered by the same strength, armed with the same love, filled with the same Father-centered purpose, he asks us to lose our lives for the sake of others.

It’s what we’re to be known for isn’t it? It’s what makes us seem backward in a forward driven world. What seems more foreign to a survival-of-the-fittest humanity than giving up your own survival so another can thrive? Who thinks of others before their own interests are met? It seems like death, and indeed it is. For in losing your life, there you will find it.

Today I am humbled by my own ugliness, the sin that creeps up everywhere, clouding everything. I am humbled but I am lifted up. I died with him and now I can know raising life power. I feel defeat and yet I can claim victory because of Jesus. It is all Jesus. There is nothing for me but Jesus. I see him, high and lifted up, the Suffering Servant who bears all our sin and shame, and washes me clean once and for all- and over and over again.

I sit here with my weak little girl, writhing in her achiness, unable to do much but hold and rock her gently and I know that this is just the Easter celebration I need. He came to serve, he gave it all, he lost his life to give me mine, he rose again to make it sure, and I am learning day in, day out, “for what else are we Born?”

egypt :: why 16 year olds won't rule the world

Today I stand in a land where nearly three thousand years ago a bruised and battered nation saw a miraculous deliverance out of a dark and brutal enslavement and into the shining glory of freedom. I walk on sand and look up at a sky that could have seen the same footsteps and felt the gaze of another Foreigner who came to  live and walk among us.

Yesterday was the first of four conference days we came all the way to Cairo to take part in. That means for now, the sightseeing is on hold. The issues being discussed at this conference by hundreds of high schoolers from all over the world are swirling around in my head as I also try to reflect on the significance of today... it is Palm Sunday, the first day of the final week leading up to Easter.

The moon has risen warm and bright, full and luminous like  a freshwater pearl dropped kerplunk in the middle of the deep midnight sky. It is a vivid reminder of the truth that surrounds me: the world is very dark. There is beauty there, the remnants and glimspes of it so wonderful that sometimes you can almost forget the burden of pain that we all live under. But in spite of all that reminds us of joy, we don't escape the reality that this world, and each of our lives, are shadowed, darkened, marred by all that destroys what we long and hope for in life.

I sit in a city full of people living in buildings that are crumbling, crusted with dirt and surrounded by piles of  trash and refuse from its inhabitants. I sit in a lavish hotel with marble floors and bath towels the size of my living room and listen to passionate debates about issues like genocide, human trafficking, violations of treaties, civil wars, and thre rise of nuclear powers. I see the effects of poverty, corruption and human fallenness all around me. The cries for collaboration, peace, and mutual consideration seem to fall dead and silent on the floors of high walled conference rooms. They are necessary talks, but will they truly bring about the "hope for a better tomorrow" that these youth dream of?

As I return every day to the comfort of my hotel room and look out onto the scene of depravation and struggle, knowing its sorrow is known to millions of people in every nation on earth, the darkness can seem to close in. I listen to the heartwrenching issues and feel overwhelmed, hating the small feeling of problems so large and the heavy burden of my small, protected life. It is easy to look out and ask, "Where is He?"

He was here. He came into the darkness but the darkness has not understood it. Nevertheless, He came still. He entered our darkness and broke its power over us. Some can see it  and believe, others cannot or have not. It is a thing of faith- for we are faith creatures. But it will not always be this way.

This is the beauty of the Easter preparation, of enjoying the season of Lent as it leads you through the Word and gives you time to think about all that this great moment in history, the Resurrection, means for us. The world can seem so dark to me, but the Light of the World stepped down into darkness, and madea way for us to be free. This Friday we will remember the darkness that Jesus friends and followers felt as all they had believed and hoped for seemed buried and dead with the broken body in the grave. But in the early light of a Sunday sunrise, the light of Truth will remind us again that though all seems lost, we know for certain who is Victorious, and who is working even now in the midst of all that still remains broken. He is making things new, and He will make all things new when the time is right.

Tomorrow we head back to the conference rooms and delegation proceedings. It will be Monday and the streets outside will be the same as they were today. But I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able... because He was stronger than the grave, and the death that could not hold him.

May you rejoice in the Light that came, comes, and is coming into your darkness!

The Way There

I sit at a fiberglass table, looking out on a tarmac where winged machines the size of several Blue Whales are taking off into the air in what seems like an act of defiance of natural law. Concrete runways stretch nearly to the horizon, there are little piles of rumpled clothing hiding the tired flesh of slumbering beings on every suitable (and unsuitable) surface you can find. An overhead sound system gently and serenely speaks arrivals and departures into our ears without the slightest hint of the anxiety that someone or other must be experiencing.

It's like an in-between world, this airport, this transfer lounge. A place between places, a stop on the Way. I'm not a travel blogger, but I feel like I need to update you on my travels since I left yesterday and won't be arriving in Cairo until sometime late tonight. Nothing much has happened since we left, since I left those  sweet cheeks and strong hands. But here I am without them, in a world between worlds and with nothing but a tarmac and people to look at, a book in my hands and thoughts running uninterrupted.

So, if you choose to join me here, please stay and feel welcome! I wish we were sitting together. Know that since I am no travel blogger my observations may be a bit more metaphysical than you were hoping for, and since I am without children my words may get a bit lengthy. We will hope for the best though.

I left on this trip to one of the oldest recorded civilizations with the realization that I would be traveling during the final days leading up to Easter. As a new Lent observer, this kind of disappointed me at first! I wanted to be home with my family and friends, preparing our hearts and minds and home together for the greatest of our Christian Holy-days. But the more I thought about it the more I realized this could be a unique way to enjoy the preparation for Easter. The historical place we will be, the unique stillness I will experience, the precious time to read and think and pray, these are gifts sacred to a mother and not to be treated lightly or wasted with the weight of guilt.

So this morning I sit watching man-made birds and God-made man and read and think through the Stations of the Cross. It's a simple, prayerful exercise, thinking through the progression of Jesus' journey from the time he is condemned to die by Pilate until he is laid in the tomb (oh the anticipation for the final Triumphant Morning!) It's impossible to sit in an international terminal and watch its crowds of people, reading about the act of the Incarnated God giving himself in death to redeem the world, and not think through it's implications for the span of all these varied lives.

 It brings questions, and sorrow-- for the fallenness of these precious creatures is evident everywhere: the businessman who berates the stewardess for her misunderstanding, the anger and frustration from the customer who is hindered by language, the harried sharpness of the mother whose child will not listen, the child who refuses to go any way but his own. There are days when I look around and can see the beauty that is still present too, the wonder that still remains of all the glory of God's original intent in creation, but today his need to die looms large on this concrete horizon.

The way of the cross is not all doom and despair. I sit here rejoicing, knowing the sweetness of forgiveness, of freedom, of hope, of joy because of the Way that Jesus took. But the journey to that sweetness begins at the cross. And wherever you are, whatever you see, you can look at him There, high and lifted up, and find that He is the Way.

On a lighter note, but one that is highly important to me, I had a Quizno's sub last night! Turkey and swiss cheese on a rosemary crusted bun. Sheer delight.

Forest for the Trees

I can barely see the rooftops today. We woke to an eerie, orange haze that has invaded our city. Eyes were rubbed, window panes swiped at with the heel of a hand, and the sulfuric haze remained. Whatever it is, the annual spring windstorms from Mongolia, or the pollution being pushed in en mass from a neighboring city, it's not the kind of thing you're craving in March.

It seems like most things around me these days are covered in a cloudy haze, one that weighs heavy on my already melancholy mind. I'm leaving for Egypt on the trip of a lifetime in a few days, but I feel kind of blah about it. I look at the children mangled about  my ankles and all I can see are the issues, in myself and in them. I notice the cupboard doors that are falling apart and the drawer that always catches. I see the broken tiles, the burnt out light bulbs, the polluted skies and endless rows of dirty high rise apartments.

But I get too lost in my glumness. I know the weather will turn. And I know I'm not alone. In two weeks we will be remembering the saddest day in the history of humanity, the day the Son of Man was slain for the sins of the world. I was thinking a lot this week about the Man of Sorrows. He does not always give answers, though there are answers. But he always gives himself.

My little its and bits of sadness are but a drop in the ocean of suffering and pain. There were others who were overcome by waves of sadness far greater than mine this week. A friend is grieving her empty arms as she waits for a baby, four young children and a father watched their newest arrival slip noisily into the world as their mother slipped quietly out, and a dear old woman lost her home and her family to the stark walls of a nursing home. I watched others try to give answers, reasons, hopeful scenarios... but it all fell listless and weak against the yawning chasm of pain. Sometimes answers just aren't enough. But He is. And so for them, and for myself as we sit in this haze and see through the glass darkly, I ask for Him.

To Lent or Not To Lent

When I was growing up I didn't hear or know much about Lent. My friends may have followed it or had little ash marks on their forehead from Ash Wednesday Mass, but if they did I didn't notice or it didn't make much of an impression. The church communities I was a part of had special services for Christmas, Palm Sunday, and Easter, but that was the extent of their adherence to any sort of formal church calendar. We were non-denominational evangelicals after all, and any allusions to high church had no place in our gym-renting, chorus-singing Sundays.

 Before you let the hair start rising on the back of your neck, let me say I am thankful for the places of worship that shaped me as a young child and into my early adult years. They were rife with issues, as any place that is made of men will be, but they pointed me in the right direction and more often than not gave me a desire for and tools to use in learning to love and follow Jesus. They did not however, observe Lent.

As I've grown older and seen the struggle and the joys that come with walking daily as a follower of Jesus, I've started to wonder about and appreciate some of those centuries-old traditions that much of the Church today still utilizes. There's a whole discussion here about a  myriad of topics like form and function, tradition and authority, and all the differences in theology between all the different denominations and divisions of the Church (which I believe have importance, but certainly not in this short little space, which as you know is sometimes not that short). I merely want to talk about how (in spite of my wonderful, conservative, tradition-dumping past) I think there is something to my make-up, and perhaps to everyone else's as well, that desires and needs a bit of bit of the ole orthodoxy.

Lent is really just a simple season of preparation. I don't know what kind of human beings we think we are when we imagine we can run around with our heads cut off, caring about everything else in our lives like work and friends, cooking and shopping, crisis handling and community-planning, reading and internet surfing, iphone and ipod playing, tv watching and toddler chasing, and everything else that fills the minutes of our precious days, and then somehow have the presence of mind to fully celebrate the most important festivals of our Christian faith. I don't know about you, but year after year I feel like I come to Dec. 24th feeling like I was busy enjoying all the beautiful traditions of ambiance-and-memory-creating, but am ill-prepared to enter into the fullness of joy I could be experiencing in celebrating the Birth of our Savior. There is something within the makeup of our minds and bodies that begs for and needs preparation.

The centuries old traditions of both the Advent and Lent seasons are just such preparations. Their aim is to get us thinking every day about the celebration that is coming, so that as we prepare our minds, our hearts, even our homes and physical surroundings for this special event, we will be at full capacity to appreciate and delight in all the Joy and Truth those special days call us to remember. "Remember." I remember a class I had in college on the major prophets of the Old Testament. It was a wonderful course and one phrase still comes to me often today, "the call to remember..." It's a problem that has plagued man since the beginning. We forget. We forget what God has done, who we are, what we have done, what in the world we're supposed to be doing, to put in the baking powder... (some more serious than others of course-- but I think baking powder is pretty serious, actually).

I love that God gave the nation of Israel a year stocked full of festivals just to help them out with this! These festivals were sometimes somber, but always pointed to a joy-full reality and were for the purpose of bringing them back to his Goodness. To me, it seems no different today. We forget so much, and the seasons of reflection leading up to and including the holidays where we celebrate Christ's birth and resurrection can be a beautiful  means of remembering the most important truths of our lives.

A few short facts about Lent:

• It appears from later writings of Tertullian and others that the Lenten season was being observed as early as the 2nd century. 
• Beginning with Ash Wednesday, Lent consists of the 44 days prior to Easter. Technically, it is 40 days of fasting, minus the 4 Sundays of those weeks because Sunday is always a day to celebrate the resurrection (I love that!)
•  It is a time of personal reflection and confession, always with the intention of seeing one's need for salvation and the glorious, loving, forgiving and merciful provision of that in Jesus' death on the cross. It is serious in nature, but for the purpose of being celebratory. 

I heard the best teaching I've ever listened to on the Lord's Supper from my father-in-law awhile ago. Specifically, because he talked about how it is not supposed to be a somber, serious, face-down-turned occasion, but one of rejoicing and thanksgiving for God's love in saving us from our sin. And that is just what our repentance and confession should always turn us toward. It SHOULD, but I am no robot. This progression of repentance to rejoicing does not happen to me if I just show up one Sunday in my pretty Easter dress after having hidden colorful eggs for an hour in the backyard. I need time to think, to mull, to be made aware, to be shown, to undo the mess that is my brain and heart, to be quiet, to prepare, to talk and to pray. It doesn't make Easter or Christmas or any other day perfect, but I hope it makes it less of a "ritual" and "thing that we do" and more of a way of life.

The challenge to live and thinks this way gets really practical when you have kids in the house. Recently, I read a little excerpt from C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters where Screwtape tells Wormwood to convince the parents that things like kneeling before bedtiime for prayers with their children and saying memorized prayers is all form and tradition... nonsense really. "At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls." It really has got me thinking about the way we pray (or don't) with our kids at night. Throwing out the rituals because they can seem stuffy and not "authentic" is fine,  but then perhaps we are throwing away other things I hadn't thought of or realized were important too? Thoughts for another post I guess, the point merely being that it has all got me thinking how we do some of these important "traditions" with our kids.

The result of all this thinking... we decided to begin Lent as a family with a simple Dinner Picnic in the Living Room. It was great fun. All we needed with our little homemade pizzas was a sheet and some candles...and the kids were beaming. "It's like we're having a celebration!" the 5 year old announced with light in his eyes. And that's exactly what I wanted them to feel; that this is exciting, anticipatory, something to enjoy even in it's moments of solemnity.

We ate our pizza, then listened to a shortened version of the readings for the day from the Lectionary (simply an organized set of purposeful Scripture reading for each day, and right now specifically for the Lent season). We talked a little, as far as interest would allow about what this season was for and what it would mean. And then we talked football and basketball jerseys, and who had to clear the plates.

This morning, as we ate breakfast, my eldest looked at me with his clear blue eyes and motioned something with his hands (the pretend sign language he likes to speak in sometimes), then translated saying "mom, I said 'your heart is from God.'" It was simple, and yet I found myself thinking about that phrase again and again throughout the day. He really encouraged me, that little one did. As much as I agonize over what damage I may or may  not be doing to them with all these imperfect attempts at leading them down the path of life, I thought that if just a few simple truths would plant themselves deeply in his little heart as simply as he stated that one this morning, then that would be enough for me.

If you're interested in a set of daily Scripture readings in preparation for Easter, here are a couple resources:

Readings, Prayers and Meditations from RCC Common Lectionary 

Readings from PCUSA lectionary

Readings from the Revised  Daily Common Lectionary