A Meaningful Lent

“Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21

Included in one of the readings for Ash Wednesday, these particular verses set me thinking about past Lenten disciplines that helped me focus on collecting treasure in heaven, the practices that had staying power with me and helped me know myself and God better.

One year I took on the practice of writing a poem each day. That practice helped me to pay attention, both to what was happening around me and to what was happening within me. After all, I needed something to write a poem about. I found the practice so helpful in paying attention that I adopted for this year, to help me live into the word that is guiding me in 2023.

Another year, I worked through a Lenten book called Simplifying the Soul. What made this practice significant is that some of the exercises it suggested revealed to me attachments of which I was not aware. I learned a lot about myself working through that book. 

Years when I gave up chocolate or desserts or similar things did not have the lasting effect that these practices had. However, the year I let someone talk me into giving up coffee I found myself resentful. I learned that year not to allow anyone else to determine what my Lenten discipline should be!

The year that likely was the hardest, and yet the most transformational, was the year my practice was to not defend, justify, or explain myself when my words or actions were misconstrued. My then-husband frequently accused me of motives that had never crossed my mind, and when I would try to clarify my actions to him, things would escalate. Choosing this discipline for Lent meant I absorbed the accusations and twisting of my motives. It was so hard. 

Our natural response is to want to be understood, to be seen for who we are. To keep quiet reminded me of Isaiah 53:7: He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

As hard as the practice was, there was less conflict in our home because I chose to keep silent. Additionally, keeping silent allowed me to see more clearly that his behavior wasn’t simple misconstruing of my actions but a form of verbal abuse. Because I wasn’t allowing myself to be drawn into an argument, I came to recognize something I hadn’t previously.

Obviously, not every Lenten discipline has had the impact that these three did. But taking the time to consider how I want to grow, how I want to be made different beyond the season of Lent, is, for me, laying up treasure in heaven. So I give careful consideration each year to the Lenten practice I will adopt, knowing this season of Lent is a chance for God to create a clean heart in me.

I invite you to pray and consider carefully how your Lenten discipline can help you lay up treasure in heaven. Blessings on your Lenten journey.

An Experience of Waking Up

 Life should be a process of waking up. I was recently thinking about some of my own waking up experiences. I define waking up experiences as times when you realize that something is other than what you thought it was, when you become aware that what you know is insufficient, or skewed, or seen through a lens that distorts your vision. Paul talks about seeing a dim reflection in a mirror in 1 Corinthians 13:12, and Rumi says “Wake up, wake up! You have slept millions and millions of years. Why not wake up this morning?”

 Father Richard Rohr had a recent series of daily messages about corporate sin, the sin perpetrated by powers and principalities that we often fail to see as sin because we benefit from the system. Reading these reminded me of one particular waking up experience. I woke up to the way I was swept up in a materialistic, acquisitive culture, and how incompatible that was to my faith.

 I was not asleep to the disparities among people, both within our country and in the world in general. I’d participated in mission trips and I knew that I had significantly more resources than most of the world’s people. But the waking up was the recognition that I was allowing myself to be swept along in the general current of American culture, which is oriented toward acquiring, holding, and protecting assets, and that this way of living did not feel healthy for me as I sought to practice being a faithful disciple of Jesus, who had very few assets.

 It’s interesting how we pick and choose which parts of Jesus’ teachings we want to follow and practice, or any of the Bible’s teachings for that matter. Some of my waking up experiences have been around the recognition that I cherry-pick which of Jesus’ examples I try to follow and which I choose to ignore or explain away as irrelevant or unrealistic.

 I realize that to live in our culture I will need certain assets to function effectively in the vocation I feel called to practice. But I am also aware that much of what I have is superfluous. While I am far from living as simply as Jesus did, I am continuing to work to detach from the desire to acquire and hold material assets because it is an expected practice of our culture. It requires attention and discipline, because even in the Western Church, we don’t necessarily advocate for going against the grain of our culture with regard to materialism.

What experiences have you had of waking up? Are you fighting to stay asleep? These are questions worth pondering, and questions I return to time and time again.

 

Unencumbered

The traffic light was red for a long time and the day was breezy, so I was able to watch the plastic bag tumble for a long distance down the side of the road. Aside from my irritation that yet another plastic bag was littering the environment, I found it remarkable that it traveled so far and so easily, not becoming snagged by anything along the way.

It became an object lesson for me, reminding me of a quote I’d shared with a yoga class last week: Those who are possessed by nothing possess everything. That bag had nothing holding it back. It was lightweight and unencumbered. It went where the wind blew it.

A famous quote by Hildegard of Bingen came to my mind: I am a feather on the breath of God. The freedom to go wherever God blows you may seem exhilarating to some and terrifying to others, or maybe both at the same time! Living an unencumbered life is something our materialistic society can hardly imagine. We are easily snagged by the values of the culture that advocate for ownership of as much as possible. We take away our own freedom to be a feather on the breath of God (a lovelier image than a tumbling plastic bag!).

Already my email inbox is filling up with holiday sale notices. The temptation to add more possessions to what I already have is heightened at this time of year. I need to remember that more stuff does not bring peace and joy. In fact, the less I am encumbered by possessions, the more freedom I have. Less stuff to take care of means more time to spend with people I love, more time to be outside in nature, more time to offer myself in service to God, more time to practice Sabbath rest.

Living a more unencumbered life requires intention and vigilance. Yet the freedom and joy of less is the reward for that discipline. To be fully available for God is the life we are all called to live. May we desire to be freed for joyful obedience, a feather on the breath of God.

Hostility vs Joy

While Jesus predicts that people will die of fear “as they await what menaces the world” (Luke 21:26), he says to his followers: “Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36). After I gazed for a long time at [Andrei] Rublev’s Trinity [icon] these words spoke to me with new power, “Praying at all times” has come to mean “dwelling in the house of God all the days of our lives.” “Surviving all that is going to happen” now tells me that I no longer need to be victim of the fear, hatred, and violence that rule the world. “Standing with confidence before the Son of Man” no longer just refers to the end of time, but opens for me the possibility of living confidently, that is, with trust (the literal meaning of con-fide) in the midst of hostility and violence.     –Henri Nouwen

There is so much hostility and violence on display in the world. War, violent crime, oppression against groups of people—these may be the first things that come to mind when we think of hostility and violence. Social media though, increasingly reveals to me that hostility and violence are not just “out there” in other countries, in certain neighborhoods, and perpetrated by dictators, gang members or others that might fit our definition of “likely suspects.”

The perpetrators of violence I am most familiar with are people of comfortable means, church goers, business leaders—the folks we work with, worship with, play tennis with, travel with. Hostility, violence and hatred show up in what is posted or shared on Facebook and Twitter. What such postings reveal to me is that many who would claim to be Christian are not interested in living with confidence in the midst of hostility but would rather participate in promoting hatred, hostility and violence.

I’ve been thinking about St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is October 4. He saw God’s light in creation. He found joy in what others bemoaned as paltry. He reached out in love to those who practiced a different religion than his. He let go of the values and culture of his family and joyfully embraced a life outside the mainstream, eschewing status and wealth and instead embracing poverty and simplicity.

He could do this because he had nothing to protect or defend. He was dwelling in the house of God while living in a world of hostility and violence. He trusted God to be God for him. He lived the gospel of Jesus, and his rootedness in God’s love meant he poured love out wherever he went.

In the midst of a society that is more interested in bringing a kingdom of hostility and violence than in bringing the kingdom of God I want to emulate his joy, his vision, his way of dwelling in the house of God. We need the spirit and theology of St. Francis.

Choices

A poem/reflection on Matthew 4:1-2

The wilderness is a place of starving,

of stripping. A place where

what seemed important,

now seems either

necessity or nothing.

Senses become clearer by sparseness

or consumed by what is now gone.

When you are starving you have

a choice: to focus on what

you no longer have

or

to be filled and nourished by

your emptiness.

Welcome

Luke 19:1-6

“. . . come down at once. I must stay in your home today.”

Possessions and demands once occupied my life—

stuff to do, stuff to tend. Schedule and home

clutter weighed me down, wearied me.

Simplicity of home and heart now allows for spontaneity.

Lightness of spirit makes for hospitable space. I have room

for laughter, love, tears and koinonia—room for what is

most precious.

Welcome friends.

Welcome love.

Welcome life.

Welcome Christ.

Listening

1 Samuel 3:1-10

I’m here.

Listening. It’s enough

for me that you know

I’m here.

Listening.

Hunger

Hosea 6:1-3

Some crave travel, their attention given

to planning trips to myriad destinations.

Some follow their palates—exploring the endless varieties

of foods and flavors.

Some collect, studying, scouring to find the next piece

of their growing assemblage of dolls,

wines, coins, cars or antiques.

Others devote themselves to stopping the aging process

through exercise, treatments and diet.

Let my hunger be for this:

to press on to know the Lord,

who is infinitely unknowable,

always surprising, ever revealing,

as close as my breath,

as vast as the cosmos.

Let my life be given to the

presence and pursuit of God.

The Speed of Growth

Mark 4:26-32

Let nature take its course—

not a popular word in a society of speed.

Consumed with size and strength and speed,

we are like mechanics, manipulating the

engine of life to meet our demands for

more, faster and bigger. We override the

Creator, who glories in the smallest flower,

the speed of a snail, the delicate strength of a spider web.

We want bigger chickens, faster answers, more choices.

We cannot content ourselves with a Kingdom that grows by itself,

that revels in smallness, that is revealed in the simplicity of seeds

and birds and bread.

Life begins small and is only authentic when unforced.

Depth and strength require time, not speed.

The Kingdom comes in its own time.

Let Nature/God take its course.

Public Park

On a day when hate hangs

like thick fog across the land,

when the tears in my soul

are those of the shaken,

it is good to be here—

to look people in the eye,

to smile and greet each other,

to love by simple presence all

who congregate here.

Empty Fullness

Sliver of moon, like a bowl

appears empty, full of darkness.

I know, but cannot see

its wholeness

its roundness

its completeness.

Earth’s enormous shadow

obscures the truth.

No empty bowl, but whole,

filled with God, hidden,

icon for my empty soul—

wholeness I cannot see

but real. Presence not felt

but known.

Moving Toward Simple

The education of the mystical sense begins in self-simplification. The feeling, willing, seeing self is to move from the various and the analytic to the simple and synthetic: a sentence which may cause hard breathing and mopping of the brows on the part of the practical [person]. – Evelyn Underhill

I would have liked to know Evelyn Underhill. Reading her book, Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People, reveals a wry sense of humor as she communicates deep wisdom. The quote above is a good example.

We are a culture averse to self-simplification. Underhill wrote in the time prior to World War I, and recognized in that era that Western culture was not interested in self-simplification. A century later, that is still true. We analyze everything to the nth degree. The President makes a 20 minute address to the nation and the analysts spend hours dissecting it.

We complicate our lives by both our activities and our possessions. Recently, I accompanied my husband to a business dinner where people around the table were comparing notes on the number of e-mail messages each received in a day’s time. At another gathering, I heard a tablemate describing a kitchen appliance that sounded like some sort of specialized blender. She had not been able to use it because the instructions were so complicated. Whenever I hear advertisements for satellite TV or radio services, I wonder why we really need 200+ options for listening to or viewing media.

What a radical notion—to choose simple in a culture of complex, to observe the synthesis, the interrelatedness of life instead of segregating ideas, music and appliances into singular categories or uses. Imagine how it might be to savor a song, reflecting on its lyrics, enjoying the harmonies or the interplay of instruments, rather than switching from station to station. What if you had a favorite skillet that you used regularly to create many dishes rather than having multiple, single-use appliances that clutter your kitchen and are used infrequently?

To choose simple as a way to connect more fully to God may mean less activity and more solitude, less reading and more silence, fewer words when praying and more listening. This is not a call for undisciplined haphazardness—reading the Bible when I remember to do so or serving others only when it doesn’t conflict with something I’d rather do—but instead is about a disciplined attentiveness to deepening relationship with God through regular silence and solitude and by engaging in activity for the sake of God’s kingdom that may not garner any attention or accolades from others.

Underhill’s observation that self-simplification is the way to open ourselves to greater connection to God certainly would lessen the inventory of many bookstores, reduce the number of Christian conferences and render inconsequential many of the seemingly burning issues that divide Christians, which is why it will not likely be a widespread movement. But I believe she is onto something in her call for self-simplification, however dull and unstimulating it may appear against our ego-oriented culture of more, bigger and busier. Jesus, after all, compares the Kingdom of God to yeast that works its way unseen through a batch of dough, and says we will find his presence in simple everyday sustenance of bread and wine. Radically simple. 

Small Service

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. . .

                                                                                                                Zechariah 4:10a

Drilling a water well for a village with no source of clean water is a pretty big deal. The residents of Monte Cristo, Guatemala, where our mission team from Mulberry Street UMC recently traveled, had been using their already meager resources to purchase safe drinking water. They knew their wells were not good. Bringing fresh, clean water was no small deal to them.

But the well was not the only work of the mission team. My role on the team was to assist our translator in teaching health and hygiene lessons to the women and children of Monte Cristo, so that once the well was complete, they would use good practices to be sure the clean water stays clean until they drink it. With such work, we do not see the outcome of our labor. What we do is make a small beginning, trusting that the lessons fall into good soil, take root and grow and that the children of Monte Cristo will thrive as they mature.

Some of what we teach goes beyond use of clean water. One point we emphasized was what they could do to enhance the livability of their community. Things we take for granted, like trash pickup, are unavailable in the rural communities of many countries. Our translator had reminded us that we were to be examples of good practices for the community, and one way that could happen was by picking up trash from the ground and putting it into trash bags.

One day, as we were doing crafts with the women of Monte Cristo, I was picking up paper scraps, sticker backs and other assorted “craft debris” that had fallen to the ground. As I stooped over and picked up the small clutter, I recalled Brother Lawrence, who said he “would not take up a straw from the ground against [God’s] order, or from any other motive than purely that of love to Him.” As I picked up trash, I offered the work to God, my small sacrifice of love and thanksgiving. The dirt yard of Ana’s house became God’s dwelling for me in that moment. I was a joy to be able to serve Christ in a seemingly insignificant way!

So now that I am home, the challenge for me is to continue to serve in small ways, not because anyone notices, but because when I pick up even a straw from the ground, it can be an act of love for God.

Divided Devotion

“Our friends there were too worldly and too clever at mixing the pleasures of the world with the service of God.”   (Story of a Soul, The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux)

Recently I read the autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux, who lived from 1873 to 1897.  What was most remarkable to me about Therese was her singular devotion to Christ from a very early age. Her observation about family friends was made when she was a child.

As I read her statement, I wonder if she might say the same of me? Am I too clever at mixing the pleasures of the world with the service of God? Is such “cleverness” what I desire?

Peter instructs his readers about such cleverness in 1 Peter 4:1-3:

Therefore, since Christ suffered as a human, you should also arm yourselves with his way of thinking. This is because whoever suffers is finished with sin. As a result, they don’t live the rest of their human lives in ways determined by human desires but in ways determined by God’s will. You have wasted enough time doing what unbelievers desire—living in their unrestrained immorality and lust, their drunkenness and excessive feasting and wild parties, and their forbidden worship of idols.

Human desires of unrestraint in food, entertainment, material wants, and physical pleasure—these sound a lot like the standard operating mode of our culture. Peter says that pursuing such things is a waste of time. Yet many of us who call ourselves Christians are right there, living in the unrestrained consumer mindset of our society. Maybe we are too clever for our own good, trying to live with such divided devotion. After all, Jesus observed: No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Matthew 6:24)

Do I really believe Jesus? Does my life show that I am singularly devoted or am I trying to live with divided devotion, serving two masters, which Jesus says cannot be done? I don’t want to waste time trying to do the impossible! 

Perfection

But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

                                                                                                                Matthew 5:48 (NLT)

Perfection is an intimidating term. Jesus gives this instruction and I feel hopeless to follow it. But I am encouraged when I read the same verse in the Common English Bible:

Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.

Completeness sounds more doable than perfection. If I think about perfection as completeness, then I can see a way to begin the process toward perfection.

Yet even completeness can be misunderstood. As I am writing these words, a fellow church member sticks his head in my office and talks about all the various "balls" he is trying to keep in the air. If completeness is thought of as an attempt on our part to be all things to all people, then it becomes just another ball we juggle--a burden rather than a blessing. Surely this is not what Jesus means!

But if we think of completeness as the recognition and use of our gifts and abilities to glorify God, then moving toward perfection/completeness becomes the process of self-discovery, of learning who we are in Christ (Colossians 3:3). It is not about adding more items to an already full to-do list, but about pushing some of those items aside to journey inward, to move past the labels that describe what we do (parent, employee, child, volunteer, etc.) and to consider what it is that brings me the deepest joy. For when we consider that, we discover our place of completeness.

Living a faithful and obedient life in Christ is not about gritting your teeth and pushing through a jungle of "shoulds" and "oughts." The only "should" is that a faithful and obedient life should be a life of joy and peace. This is only possible when we strip away the "doing" that is burdensome, and instead attend to our "being." As we come to know who we are in Christ, we can live fully alive, from the depths of our being, and such a life is manifested in the joyful offering of our spiritual gifts, in fact, our whole selves, to the world.

God: Good to the Last Drop

If you stray to the right or the left, you will hear a word that comes from behind you: “This is the way; walk in it.”                                                                                                              Isaiah 30:21

Isn’t this what we crave from God if we are seeking to live a faithful life? I know people who have heard God speak and I am grateful for the occasions when I have heard a direction from God. If I am to hear such a word from God, a word that gives direction to my path, I cannot cram my life full of my own agenda. God’s word comes to me as a gift I receive by slowing down, doing one thing at a time and living with full attention devoted the task at hand.

One of the unexpected fruits of accepting the Lenten challenge to drink only water as our beverage has been the appreciation I now have for a cup of coffee. Prior to Lent, drinking coffee was often a mindless exercise, a habitual practice that failed to get much of my attention. Sure, I like smelling the freshly ground beans or the freshly brewed coffee. On a cold morning, I looked forward to a cup of hot coffee upon returning from my morning walk. But when I drank it, I usually was also doing something else and the coffee was not the center of my attention.

Slowing down to appreciate my coffee actually helps me pay attention to God. Chris Seay, in the book A Place at the Table, calls what we chose to give up for Lent “extravagances.” To think of coffee as an extravagance has given me a new appreciation for it. He challenges us to remember that all we are given to eat and drink is a gift, a miracle from the hand of God.

To drink a cup of coffee with attention and appreciation is a sacred act of worship and this discipline of doing one thing at a time heightens my ability to hear a word from God. Being fully present in the present moment allows me to see things I would otherwise miss, and prepares my mind and heart to be fertile soil for the word that God wants to plant there. Both literally and figuratively, I can taste and see that the Lord is good!

The Simplicity of Silence

Peter exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s wonderful for us to be here! Let’s make three shelters as memorials—one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He said this because he didn’t really know what else to say, for they were all terrified.

                                                    Mark 9:5-6

Why is it that we so frequently feel we must say something to fill the silence? Nobody had asked Peter to speak in this moment when Jesus was transfigured and was with Moses and Elijah, yet Peter felt that he needed to speak up, to make his presence known, to fill the silence instead of being an observer.

We use noise of any kind to soothe us because we are afraid of silence. It makes us uncomfortable, often when we are alone, and always when we are with another.

In my Sunday school class, where our attendance is usually around 20-30 each week I struggle sometimes to remain silent when there is a time of open discussion. Observing Peter, I recognize that many times my speaking is not about sharing some profound insight but about the desire for acknowledgment. Like Peter, I speak to make my presence known, and like Peter, much of what comes out of my mouth is equally as irrelevant.

In Freedom of Simplicity Richard Foster speaks of simplifying our speech. He says we shouldn’t say we’re starving when we are merely hungry. Doing so diminishes real starvation, a plight all too real in our world. My hunger in no way is anything like the real starvation another faces.

I think simplicity of speech also extends to the “filling the air with words” that we sometimes do. It’s understandable that we do it, for our entire days can be filled with words from television, radio and work. We sing songs in our heads, read words on a page or a screen, talk on the phone, text or e-mail (or even blog!). Even if the words aren’t audible, they fill our heads.

What if I used fewer words? What if I could disconnect, unplug and shut down the constant river of words that beats on me like a waterfall and that spews forth from my own mind and mouth? Maybe a good Lenten discipline would be to use fewer words, especially words directed (or aimed, as the case may be) at others instead of God. Maybe if I used fewer words, I would learn to make my words more meaningful.

Maybe too, I could enter into a silence that is without words, a place where being present in the presence of God is sufficient, where nothing needs to be said (or even thought), where the glory of God simply shines into me, and I receive it in silent, wordless gratitude.