an oblique sense of gratitude...

This year's journey into and through Lent has simultaneously been simple and complex: simple in that I haven't given much time or attention to the rituals and practices I once favored in the past; and complex in that I keep finding new ways that my time-tested demons keep morphing into new irritants and manifestations. It was genuinely sobering to realize that the ancient words of the old preacher, Qoheleth, in Ecclesiastes can still shed new light on my life: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; for there is nothing new under the sun. Traditionally, I've interpreted this insight historically, but in these later days of the second half of my life I find it is equally true ethically, morally, spiritually, and personally as well as politically.

Perhaps that's why this year I shied away from what had been long practiced personal Lenten disciplines. Once upon a time, I constructed a series of fasts to mark this sacred season. Like Jesus in the desert, I yearned for the Spirit to help me heal my inner wounds, questions, and confusion. This year, however, it felt like most of those efforts at piety were more self-righteous distractions than true balms of healing. Clearly, a spirituality of sacrifice used to resonate within when I was an earnest young believer. But today, as an elder who must pick and choose how and where I share my attention, the assertive and judgmental zeal of days gone by no longer works. Indeed, this year my solitary Lenten commitment consisted of making simple soups for supper. Not only was that sufficient for the day, but it felt like it was enough for the One who is Holy, too. And here's why:  

+ First, St. Paul really was right when he wrote that living into the way of Jesus is NOT about being squeezed into someone else's mode; but rather simply entering everyday as a servant of grace.

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him. (Romans 12: 1-4, The Message)

+ Second, small is holy and less is more. As an earnest urban intern in NYC, I learned that when a person came to the church in need, more often than not the more complicated their story the greater the bullshit. Over time this axiom hit me as true for my soul as well: the harder I make trusting grace every day, the more I am able to avoid living and loving in simplicity. How did Jesus put it in the sermon on the mount?

Don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong. You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the supple moves of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you. (St. Matthew 5: 33-48, The Message)

+ And third, hubris can be a portal into trust rather than just one of the seven deadly sins IF I'm willing to own it and then let it go. Being full of myself can be a paradoxical blessing when I let it take me down a few pegs. Again, the sermon on the mount is instructive:

You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought. (St. Matthew 5: 2-3, The Message)

Most days I don't need MORE to do - or think - or pray. There are troubles enough in every day. No, I don't need MORE, I need less so that I can attend to the love right in front of me. Or reign in my inclination towards self-pity when I am weary and just deal with it (whatever IT may be.) I suspect this is what the emptiness of the Lenten desert is all about: letting go of inward distractions so that I might be genuinely connected in grace. Of course, my old devotional practices gave me the words to explore spiritualities of descent, but true relinquishment doesn't start with sound. it needs silence to mature. It needs time to go deep. How did Psalm 51 put it: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

This Lent my fast from fasting showed me just how much I need silence. And space. And time to rest. Without these small expressions of grace, I am unable to discern the presence of the sacred in the ordinary. I become impatient and surly. I want more when the Spirit is offering me less. Frederick Buechner puts it like this:

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day's work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly... If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

Fr. Rohr recently reminded me that is in the quotidian that Christ's shows up:

I’ve noticed in the Gospels that even after two appearances of the Risen Christ, the apostles return to their old job of fishing (John 21:3). They don’t join the priesthood, try to get a job at the Temple, go on more retreats, take vows, leave their wives, or get special titles. Nor is there any mention of them baptizing each other or wearing special clothing beyond that of a wayfarer or “workman” (Matthew 10:9–10). When the inner is utterly transformed, we don’t need symbolic outer validations, special hats, or flashy insignia. We can also note that the Risen Christ is never apparent as a supernatural figure, but is mistaken in one case for a gardener, another time for a fellow traveler on the road, and then for a fisherman offering advice. He seems to look just like everybody else after the Resurrection (John 20:15; Luke 24:13–35; John 21:4–6), even with his wounds on full display! In the Gospels it appears we can all go back to “fishing” after any authentic God encounter, consciously carrying our humiliating wounds, only now more humbly. That is our only badge of honor. In fact, it is exactly our woundedness that gives us any interest in healing itself, and the very power to heal others. As Henri Nouwen rightly said, the only authentic healers are always wounded healers. Good therapists will often say the same.

It is with oblique gratitude that i return thanks form my inner anxiety this Lent. It has become an earthy portal to reconnect with simple grace. Onward to Maundy Thursday tonight...