Lent is in the air. On the old calendar, we're in the liturgical weeks with the curious Latin names: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima (roughly seventy, sixty, fifty days until Easter). All of this serves as a holy countdown to the Quadragesima, which is the Forty Days of Lent. Ash Wednesday is in nine days.
Last year here we reflected on dozens of meditative paintings by the Russian artist Isaak Levitan. The series was well-received and can be re-visited by scrolling back through the blog's archive: February 26 through April 17. So, what might we do this year?
Lent is called, The Church's Springtime - the time of warming, increased light, melting, swelling, enlivening, hatching, birthing, close observation. And while all of these have an outer seasonal significance, they also signify a deeper human/spiritual interior meaning.
A couple of years ago I asked a young person, "What's Lent?" and he answered, "Isn't that when you give something up?" How is it that we're still saying this? Is this all we're handing on to the next generation? How have we reduced this amazing time - a Springtime for the Church - to "giving something up"? That we have taken the message of Jesus and turned it into something so little: giving up bad words, chocolate, wine, beer, a TV show. To be sure, Lent should be a most sober time, but because we're trying to wake up interiorly. "Wake up!" Jesus said that.
Even as a boy I thought this "give it up" method was tedious and of small account. And negative! So perhaps here we can embrace a Lent that might enliven us and make us more whole rather than just weary counters. Over the years I've heard: "I'm giving up booze for Lent, but beer doesn't count." "Oh, it's Lent. I need to lose ten pounds anyway." Counting makes for a pretty low-grade Lent.
Even as a boy I thought this "give it up" method was tedious and of small account. And negative! So perhaps here we can embrace a Lent that might enliven us and make us more whole rather than just weary counters. Over the years I've heard: "I'm giving up booze for Lent, but beer doesn't count." "Oh, it's Lent. I need to lose ten pounds anyway." Counting makes for a pretty low-grade Lent.
Some people arrive at Easter starved, exhausted, frustrated and only superficially changed, so that they're back to the same silly habits before the Easter Octave is over? Springtime goes deep - down into the ground where roots come alive again. You might hear that on the Weather Channel, or that sentence can have a metaphorical meaning. But as I say often, metaphor doesn't mean not real, but MOST real because the word or image is understood in the most personal way.
