This year's Lenten season is one that seems to be heavier than most. I have a lot going on personally, but the world at large also feels tumultuous and unstable. It doesn't feel like much of anything is certain except heartache at this phase of life in the pandemic and this increasingly more terrifying geopolitical culture.
Lent is usually my favorite season of the Church. It is one of the few times in the life of the Church when everyone is on the losing end. It recognizes the reality of death and the reality of suffering, which seems to be so often merely glossed over the rest of the year. As the weather outside is cold and wet and nasty, so too we are confronted with our own cold natures and internal mess. We are encouraged to come face to face with the areas where life is simply not living up to our dreams. And here, at the end of these trying 40 days, we see Resurrection and Life and Love get the final say. It's a powerful time of year.
And yet, this year if I'm being honest, I'm coming to Lent not with an eagerness to encounter the mysteries that will unfold, but rather with a dreading that I must endure yet another year of ash and dust imposed on me. Tomorrow's Ash Wednesday is almost frightening to me. With ash smeared on my forehead, hearing once again that I am existing in this life with the fragility of dust, I can't help but feel small and helpless.
Ash Wednesday will bring with it the remembrance that you and I are dust. Dust... scattered particles of earth. Can something beautiful come from such a shattering? It's here, in the midst of feeling that nothing good can come from dust, that I'm called to remember that God creates from dust.
It's because of this way of thinking that I have decided that this year for Lent I will not fast. My spiritual discipline will not be one of deprivation this year. It will not focus on dust devoid of life, but the creative capacity that is present in that same dust. So I will be doing something creative for each of the 40 days to come. I will be bringing something into existence that previously was not there. Perhaps I'll sketch. Perhaps I'll cook for friends. Perhaps I'll write here. No matter what avenue, I'll be exercising my creative abilities this Lent.
May the Creative God bless us as we encounter the paradox of living in Light while also facing fears. May the dust on our foreheads drive us not toward despair but hope.
Comments