Archive for the ‘Lent’ Tag
Do-overs are packed with grace, but I often use them to beat myself with shame or obligation. “Why couldn’t I get it right the first time?” I demand, or, “I’ll work twice as hard to make up for lost time.” But grace invites me, without judgment, to try again… ironic given my Lenten goal of fasting from self-judgment. It was a great plan that was soon forgotten under the pressure of finishing my last semester and entering the job market in the middle of a pandemic-driven lock-down in which even church was closed.
So the Easter service was squeezed onto a computer screen between my Facebook browsing and covid-19 ferreting. Instead of a triumph over isolation and fear, Sunday seemed to invite me back to solitude and reflection, a second lent. And in that quiet, my soul whispered again of my need for gentleness towards myself. This was a step further than before, not just ending my self-condemnation, but offering myself kindness and consideration, kisses to my spirit.
This feels like my 2020 calling—being generous to myself and others. Inward and outward compassion is inextricable. In my experience, true self-compassion never competes with compassion for others, but rather empowers it, while harshness toward myself poisons my love for others. If I thrash myself for being late to work, I am angry with every driver who gets in my way. If I make room for my mistakes, I won’t offer sighing patience over Kimberly’s. Generosity is irresistibly expansive. Grace towards anyone, even yourself, breeds grace towards everyone. And when I fail, I get a do-over again and again, endless opportunities.
Eleven years ago on a forested mountain covered with treacherous ice, sparkling like slivers of glass in the sun, Kimberly said “Yes!” to me. I slipped on her finger a ring that we designed together, two light blue opals, the color of her eyes, surrounding a teardrop diamond. My wedding ring was a simple circle of beaten gold, showing the rough marks of the hammer blows that shaped it.
Our stories have always been forged by pain and sorrow, and we were embracing this together, the sadness and the beauty. It is the seeping wounds of cut limbs bound together that creates the miracle of grafting, the agony and glory of each coursing through the veins of the other. It is not just slow healing that we find, but a hybrid bouquet that far surpasses the beauty of either flowering branch on its own.
How perfect that our 11-year engagement anniversary should combine Valentine’s day and Ash Wednesday. How apropos that I inadvertently wore black pants and a red shirt yesterday to school where I had my one class called “Spirit and Trauma.” I came home to a living room full of lit candles, and Kimberly and I shared with one another our struggles and hopes, inviting God to pour in his grace.
Beginning with advent, our motto has been “find the beauty,” and for this season of Lent we have refined it to, “find the beauty in lament.” This week we will remember the goodness that has come to our marriage through our brokenness. “There is a crack in everything. That’s where the light gets in.” Our deep, genuine, close connection is the bond of shared sorrows through stumbling love. This week we will name each facet of that unique beauty of brokenness to one another.
My memory is like cellphone reception in the sticks–very iffy. I am a full-spectrum forgetter, from the trivial pen to the crucial time sheet submission, and everything in-between. I’m so good at misplacing things that I’m surprised to find them where they belong–the cupboard is the last place I look for my coffee cup. I have a whole strategy for dealing with my incompetence–jotting myself reminders and propping them in key places (my computer keyboard, my Honda dashboard) or leaning things against the door so I can’t leave without them. I am totally prepped for the onset of Alzheimer’s!
Along with my other inveterate shortcomings, It is my wild forgetfulness that wakens my memory, that keeps me aware of my own inadequacy. Some folks are so successful or competent or busy or distracted that their memory needs to be elbowed into recalling their own failings. They get good grades at work and church and family and pick up extra credit volunteering at the mission downtown. Their lives, unlike mine, constantly point to their virtues and accomplishments, and it is their failings that they forget. They need reminders, blacked out calendar days, time set aside to reflect on the noxious embers that still smolder in their bones. They need Ash Wednesday.
But I need Resurrection Sunday. I live in the ash heap of my own failures, reflecting back on them not for 40 days, but 40 years. I don’t need reminding, I need rescuing. What I need to remember, always remember, is Easter, the joy of forgiveness. My hope cannot be in outgrowing my faults or in forgetting them, but in living my present messy life in the full embrace of God, the God who not only accepts me in spite of my past failures, but also in expectation of my future ones, who is not put off by my need, but is drawn to me because of it. We all fall down, constantly fall down, but may we land in His grace, not in our own self-loathing. And may the ashes on our foreheads be the sign of our mutual poverty as we hold one another’s hands and dance together in the glorious light of His redemptive love.
Coming from a non-liturgical religious upbringing, I didn’t even know about lent until well into my adult years. As my whole life was lived in self sacrifice, I didn’t feel the need to dedicate one particular season to it, and once I started to heal from this self-flagellating outlook, I could not really practice sacrifice in any sort of healthy, spiritually beneficial way. This is the first year I chose to give lent a whirl, looking for the kind of focus that would be a meaningful blessing to my soul. For lent I decided to give up hurry and haste.
SLOW DOWN!
Driving was my first focus. I have stopped trying to make yellow lights, I leave earlier for work, and I look for things along the road I have missed in the past in my rush to get somewhere… to actually find pleasure in the trip itself. I have started to work on tasks at a more deliberate, even slow, pace. I have given myself the right to accomplish things on a calmer schedule, or even to leave them undone… to walk thoughtfully, absorbing the moment rather than focusing on the goal, destination, or end product. It requires a good deal of trust to depend less on myself, my efforts, and allow God to cover for me. Giving myself permission to rest is a vital spiritual exercise, one of the oldest life principles in the book, the intentional counterpart to creative work (as the Genesis story of beginnings recounts). My guess is that work is neither creative nor blessed (to ourselves as well as others) if it does not arise from a rested heart. Life isn’t waiting for me at the destination. Life is what happens while getting there.
Janathan Grace Reflections 