‘What Shall I DO For Lent’ Or ‘Who Shall I BE For Lent?
Easter comes very early this year. It is the last Sunday of March. We’ll be waving palm branches by mid- March. An early Easter means an equally early Lent. Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine’s Day may therefore have caught some of us by surprise. We aren’t really prepared to think about “giving something up” for Lent when we have all those left over Valentine’s Day chocolates still sitting on our table.
Talk of Lent almost always drifts into conversations about “giving something up.” This “giving something up” for Lent usually translates into giving up meat, sugar, alcohol or caffeine for a few weeks. Yet this “giving something up” can simply make life more complicated. Rather than simplifying our lives, “giving something up” can become just another detail to worry about and fuss over. Disappointed by our experience of “giving something up” for Lent, some of us may instead consider Lent as a time to “add” rather than “subtract” something from our lives. Lent becomes a time to “do” something spiritual. Maybe pray or read the bible a little more frequently. Maybe help with some project that serves those in need; collect food for Kensington School, contribute those clothes we no longer wear to a local shelter. Because so many of us lead lives that are already over-scheduled and filled with a dizzying array of distractions, “doing” one more thing, however, can also be experienced as simply one more burden to add to already over-burdened lives.
I’ve spoken to many people over numerous Lenten seasons who have found joy and meaning in “adding” as well as “giving up” something during Lent. For some, they have verged on life-changing. So if giving something up or adding something to your life is meaningful and significant for you as a Lenten discipline, please consider pursuing one or both of those commitments with devotion and discipline.
However, I’ve also known people for whom neither “adding something for Lent” nor “giving up something for Lent” seemed to be meaningful. So, if these Lenten options seem overwhelming or more of a burden than a joy, I want to suggest a third alternative. Rather than ask what to do or not do for Lent, ask yourself instead who you want to be during Lent. Rather than giving up something or adding something, we can adopt the practice of bringing a spirit of intentionality and presence, of attention and mindfulness, to the tasks, routines, and relationships that are already an ongoing part of our lives.
Rather than giving up a certain food for Lent, we instead seek to eat more mindfully and gratefully. We bring a deeper level of awareness to what we are eating rather than opting to eliminate a particular food from our diet. We pause before taking that first bite and think with gratitude about all the people who grew the food, transported it, passed it into our hands, or prepared it for us. Rather than hastily eating and thinking of food simply as fuel for our machine-like bodies, we slow down and eat more consciously with greater awareness and thankfulness of what we are eating, savoring with gratitude and appreciation the flavors and textures. Rather than give up chocolate, eat one piece and slowly let it melt on the back of our tongue and really relish it rather than hastily gobble one piece after another up until the bowl is empty. We pause between bites of pasta and sauce to reflect briefly on how our marvelously made bodies will break down and incorporate into every cell and muscle all we are eating, thus contributing to our health and well-being. We take time to really taste and smell the delicious juiciness that single slice of an orange as we bite into it.
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Rather than add some special activity to our lives, suppose we commit ourselves simply to noticing – really noticing – what we are actually experiencing as we go through our day. We genuinely look at the people around us and listen intentionally to what they are saying. Not only their words but to what lies behind those words. When we open ourselves to one another to listen and learn, we come away from that encounter with our own experience enriched by another’s description of their experience. We feel the weight of our own bodies as we move step-by-step through physical space. We notice how our muscles flex or relax when we sit down or stand. Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer, wrote Christian mystic and philosopher Simon Weil. Attention presupposes faith and love. She describes absolutely unmixed attention as itself the purest form of prayer.
Maybe the most transformative Lenten discipline for some of us is to simply “be” present to our ordinary experiences and to discover how the presence of God is showing up for us in them. If we focus more on this quality of our “being,” then the character of our “doing” will undoubtedly be transformed gradually for the better as well.
So, if during this first week of Lent you are stilling pondering what to “do” for Lent, then maybe change the question to “who do I want to be during Lent?”
On the journey to Easter with you,
Pastor Thomas