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| Agapanthus just before blooming |
It is Septuagesima Sunday on the old liturgical calendar. Septuagesima means Easter is nine weeks away - roughly seventy days. It is the first of three transition Sundays (the other two being Sexagesima and Quinquagesima) escorting us from the Christmas-Epiphany season to Lent. It is the Sunday when the Alleluia disappears and the vestment color changes to violet. The lovely Agapanthus buds in the photo above clue us in.
Septuagesima gives us a heads up. Get ready! Don't be caught off guard! Have a plan! Give Lent some thought now so you can get off to a running start come Ash Wednesday.
Many Catholics haven't got an idea of Lent that transcends some kind of food deprivation. Americans don't do well with food: we eat too much or we eat poorly, and that's causing lots of problems. So maybe having some Lenten aspect that includes less food isn't a bad idea.
But I have something else in mind - something that will help us to become (even a little) new by Easter. And that's the point of Christianity anyway, isn't it - to become a new kind of human person. To that end I'd propose fasting from complaining, blaming and grumbling for forty days. This is serious stuff. C.S. Lewis wrote about it in The Great Divorce.
But I have something else in mind - something that will help us to become (even a little) new by Easter. And that's the point of Christianity anyway, isn't it - to become a new kind of human person. To that end I'd propose fasting from complaining, blaming and grumbling for forty days. This is serious stuff. C.S. Lewis wrote about it in The Great Divorce.
"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others...but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then, there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud."
I've met people who I'd venture wouldn't know what to talk about if they weren't complaining, blaming or grumbling. It seems to be in our national DNA as we were founded or birth-ed out of an angry rebellion hundreds of years ago. But for all our talk about being a nation of religious values we often betray that with our complaining, grumbling and blaming.
So this Lenten Fast could be very difficult for many of us. It would require a kind of self-awareness or self-observation we're not accustomed to. Why bother? Because like a lousy diet, it's simply not good for us, and it isn't Christ-ly and it seems to reflect an un-grateful spirit.
The biblical number forty simply means a long time. So we have this long Lenten season coming up which gives us plenty of time to get at it and to make a change. I knew a dirty-mouthed man who one Lent promised to put a dollar in the jar every time he cursed. By Easter the habit had been broken. A lot can happen in forty days.
But I think when it comes to growing and evolving ourselves, Christians often don't go deeply. We try to discipline ourselves with corrective virtues (forms of practicing goodness) but the underlying problem, even pathology, remains. A dry drunk is an alcoholic who hasn't tasted a drop, but who remains arrogant, vain, nasty, bossy, dishonest. That's because there's been no inner investigation of oneself.
So if we try the no complaining, no blaming, no grumbling fast this Lent we might ask ourselves along the way:
"Don't even go there," was a phrase Americans over-used a lot in the recent past. But there are lots of places where we SHOULD go - albeit they are interior places left locked up, hidden and un-investigated. Hint: we do a lot of this grumbling and complaining because of original sin. And original sin is not about lust, or gluttony or disobedience, but about power.
But not to be discouraged or put off. Look at the splendid, get ready Agapanthus buds at the start of this post. They reflect the beauty of possibility, transition and change!
So this Lenten Fast could be very difficult for many of us. It would require a kind of self-awareness or self-observation we're not accustomed to. Why bother? Because like a lousy diet, it's simply not good for us, and it isn't Christ-ly and it seems to reflect an un-grateful spirit.
The biblical number forty simply means a long time. So we have this long Lenten season coming up which gives us plenty of time to get at it and to make a change. I knew a dirty-mouthed man who one Lent promised to put a dollar in the jar every time he cursed. By Easter the habit had been broken. A lot can happen in forty days.
But I think when it comes to growing and evolving ourselves, Christians often don't go deeply. We try to discipline ourselves with corrective virtues (forms of practicing goodness) but the underlying problem, even pathology, remains. A dry drunk is an alcoholic who hasn't tasted a drop, but who remains arrogant, vain, nasty, bossy, dishonest. That's because there's been no inner investigation of oneself.
So if we try the no complaining, no blaming, no grumbling fast this Lent we might ask ourselves along the way:
- Why do I complain so much?
- Do I even hear myself?
- Why do I so often resort to blaming?
- What has happened to me that grumbling is so much a part of my lifestyle?
- What fears might be attached to this Lenten approach?
"Don't even go there," was a phrase Americans over-used a lot in the recent past. But there are lots of places where we SHOULD go - albeit they are interior places left locked up, hidden and un-investigated. Hint: we do a lot of this grumbling and complaining because of original sin. And original sin is not about lust, or gluttony or disobedience, but about power.
But not to be discouraged or put off. Look at the splendid, get ready Agapanthus buds at the start of this post. They reflect the beauty of possibility, transition and change!
