LENT
So on Ash Wednesday, many people in the Christian Church mark the beginning of Lent. Even if you don't, for whatever reason, you have probably heard of the traditional custom of giving up something for the duration of the season.
I get the idea, but I've never really liked it. Nothing is wrong with the extra sacrifices, like giving up chocolate or eating fish on Fridays. The giving-up-something-for-Lent thing bothers me mostly because, for me, it represents a misunderstanding. Lent isn’t supposed to be a unique time of life with some extra doses of self-sacrifice and suffering. The season of Lent is ordinary life. There is no other season in the Church year that captures our regular life quite as well as Lent.
On one end, there is Ash Wednesday, a day of promised darkness. Nobody gets out of here alive, says Ash Wednesday. Of course. If that weren’t enough, Ash Wednesday will guarantee you that you are going to suffer some degree of pain along the way. Not only will other people or systems or circumstances inflict pain on you, but you will be the cause of pain for others.
And that is your reality, as promised by Ash Wednesday. That’s how it will go down.
Awful as it is, not having enough chocolate or only having fish on Fridays are the least of your troubles, says Ash Wednesday. It sounds bleak and depressing, but it is all too true. Ash Wednesday is a day that doesn’t let us avoid the word, let alone the reality of death.
This day that begins the Lenten season talks about all kinds of death. It reminds us of the deaths of relationships, expectations, inequalities, addictions, jobs, health, peace, beliefs, integrity.
Ash Wednesday pulls on one end in brutal and somber fashion.
Yet pulling from the other end of Lent is Easter.
It’s a day that with a completely different promise, one that competes with the darkness. Easter’s promise says that while death is real, it is not reality; life is.
Grass grows through the snow. Victory can be found in defeat. Easter tells me that death doesn’t have to win. It’s a day that reminds us that new beginnings come out of old endings. It’s a day that says that there is more to do with our lives than just getting by. It’s a day that says grace isn’t distributed out only to those who deserve it, but is given to the ones who don’t.
Like to those who inflict pain on you.
Like to those who you have inflicted pain on.
Like, well … everyone. Like you and me.
This is why I think that Lent is, really, the most real of times, and the most trustable. An honest all-encompassing season that informs every other season in the Church year. It’s not a time to sing, “Keep On The Sunny Side of Life” kind of season. It’s more like "We Shall Overcome."
Oh, Lent won’t deny that there’s death, but it does deny death the ultimate victory. Lent reminds us that we are dust. Lent admits that we will return to it. And yet, Lent promises that even so, out of dust comes something new.
Lent tells the truth. Life hurts, but there’s more to living than that.
So eat your chocolate (make it bitter chocolate if you must), break off a piece to share with someone who is sad, and someone who makes you sad. Enter and stay for a time in the honest, truthful, regular life season of Lent.