Ash Wednesday 2023

The beginning of Lent, 2023. This has been a year like few others! And, I have to say, almost as if my life has been deliberately leading me here ... to this point, this climax, from which the rest of my life will play out. It seems this year, the time of Lent has slashed its way into my reality, and it would be easy to dismiss it, ignore it, like I've done so often in the past, but maybe I should re-think that. Maybe I should use this to ... to create intent and change and focus. 

The time of Lent, 40 days before the Thursday before Good Friday, is a common Christian practice. It starts with Ash Wednesday and ends on Maudy Thursday. The purpose was to bring a form of solidarity among Christians and Christ, to join him in his preparation for the crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. The 40 days are to align us with Christ's time in the desert, where he was tempted by Satan, and where we remove that in our lives that tempt us as well. 

There are three points to Lent - fasting, praying, and 'almsgiving' (giving to the poor). Often, fasting is a removal of food, but in current times, people remove things they feel might enslave them, turn them from Christ, like alcohol or chocolate or something like that from which to abstain. Non-believers have even used this as a time for their own abstaining for their own health. Prayer is something ... I think most do in private or give lip-service to? And giving to the poor ... not something commonly talked about. 

As I sit here, I truly don't know how this season might play out for me. How God might want me to engage with this time and with Him. In the past, I've begun with great gusto but it doesn't take long to fizzle, like many other things in my life, it seems. So, I pause here for a bit, to reflect, to pray, to listen to what God might call from me this year. 

I recently came across a blog that struck a note in me. The blog is called Interrupting the Silence and specifically Lent with the Desert Fathers, the writer speaks of an interpretation of this being more about "detachment" rather than the rejection of "attachment", which one would think would be the intention of Lent. But detachment is not a rejection as much as a letting go. Think on that. It's not the act (violent?) of pushing away or forceful abstaining as much as releasing. Could there be something different in those images that could bring something into the human experience? 

In this particular blog article (linked here) he offers some good exercises as well as opportunity for further reflection and thought, other articles, and such with which to sit. 

My plan for the next 40 days - I know my soul needs something, it needs a vision, a focus, a direction. I need to re-connect and re-direct, and this time can be used as such. Some questions for the journey: 

1) From what is God calling me to detach myself from over the next 40 days? 

2) On what is God calling me to meditate upon over the next 40 days? 

3) To what is God calling me to give of myself over the next 40 days? 

Until next entry, when I shall answer these questions ... Shalom.

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