Lent Leads to Life

 

Life is a series of ungrieved, unhealed losses; this is the wisdom of Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent.  There is a holy timing to Lent, beginning anywhere between mid-February and early March.  Unlike Christmas, celebrated on the same date every year, Lent dances around the lunar calendar.  To figure out when Lent starts, you first pinpoint Easter.  Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox.  Who knew you needed a degree in selenology (study of the moon) to understand our faith?  Why is it this way?  Great question.  One response is that Christianity grew out of Judaism, which follows the lunar calendar.  Secondly, our ancestors lived closer to the earth.  What guided/governed their lives was creation's rhythms.  People in Jesus’ day were keyed into the seasonality of God.  Just as the earth went through a cycle of planting, growing, harvest, and rest/barrenness, so did every part and parcel of human life, relationships, and faith (we talked about this when we studied Ecclesiastes 3).  Creation also taught and told people how to celebrate new life with the first fruits of the field.  So many Jewish festivals are tied to harvesting and offering to God our response.  People knew that they couldn’t make the fig tree grow faster.  Yes, they could tend, trim, water, and watch carefully, but there was so much beyond their control (rain, droughts, or the size of the harvest, because even if you poured all your energy into caring for that fig tree, it might only give you enough for one fig newton …whomp, whomp!). 

 

While the exact date of Easter can move around, we do know the Spring Equinox falls between March 19-21.  Once we find that exact date, we can see when the next full moon is, and the following Sunday is Easter.  Lent is the forty days before Easter, excluding Sunday.  We do this because we live on the other side of the first Easter; we know the ending of the story, so every Sunday, even in Lent, is a celebration of resurrection, new life, and that God isn’t finished with us yet.  When you count backwards from Easter Sunday, excluding Sunday, forty days falls on a Wednesday ~ which we call Ash Wednesday.  Usually, the day before Ash Wednesday is a feast day.  Traditionally, on Fat Tuesday (which is what Mardi Gras in French means), early Christians would make cakes and treats to get rid of all the sugar and flour in their homes.  It is like a science and history lesson combined into one Morning Meditation today! 

 

As a culture, we are allergic to grieving our losses and naming our pain.  We take very seriously those words in the Constitution, “pursuit of happiness”.  We pour our lives, energy, and money into this.  Come hell or high water, we can’t and won’t be stopped.  Yet, grief is not the absence of happiness or joy; grief is a natural and normal part of life’s holy equation.  Anyone who has enjoyed a good meal knows it needs to end.  You can’t sit at the table forever.  Anyone who knows the passion of falling in love knows that at some point, such fire of dating and the honeymoon can’t be sustained.  Yet, love can be transformed. 

Ash Wednesday brings us back to our agrarian roots.  Just as the farmers of Jesus’ day couldn’t control the amount of the harvest, nor can we completely control our lives.  There are parts of the equation each day that won’t contort or conform to our willpower.  Ash Wednesday opens space for us to say that we’ve caused hurt and heartbreak, and that others have caused us.  We can be honest with ourselves and seek to grow into the image of God.  What losses are you grieving today: personally, familiarly, culturally, or in faith?  Hold this holy question, letting it interrupt this August day with heartfelt honesty that we all need in this world.  May God’s love hold you as you listen to your shy soul share what is stirring within.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

Vulnerable, born of Mary, laid in a common feeding trough for animals, and in a dusty/dirty barn God, we don’t understand You.  We stand under a mystery and marvel that Your ways are not our ways; Your truths undo/challenge/create confusion for the gospels of the world about power, prestige, and always wanting more!  Your truths are of being close to the least, lost, lonely, left behind, and seeking out those beloved on the fringe.  You continue to undo economic and political systems from which we benefit and participate.  Help us, O God, for we cannot help ourselves.  In a time when we want to win, we want to see our opinion become rule; we rarely listen to Your upside-down realm.  Open our ears, our hearts, and our lives to a mystery that needs more than a few weeks in December and an hour one night on the 24^th to explore.  Christmas, that You are with us always, is an invitation that will reorder our calendars, credit cards, and ways we show up in this world right now, if we let it.  Help us welcome Your inconvenient, unconditional love to rearrange the stables of our lives now and throughout the weeks to come.  Amen.  

Advent in August

 

What is your favorite Christmas tradition?  Is it baking cookies, singing carols, or putting up decorations?  Is it a quiet moment when the words of Silent Night for a few fleeting moments feel true and trustworthy?  Is there a new tradition that can help open your mind/heart/soul to the mystery of God’s arrival in a barn, especially this year?  To be sure, I want to be careful not to ask or suggest you try to cram more into your life.  Perhaps a new tradition can replace one that has become less meaningful/where you are going through the motions but not feeling any swirling of the Sacred.  Why wait?  Okay, maybe if your favorite tradition is buying a fruitcake for everyone, you might not find those in abundance on the shelves today.  But you could probably find fruit and cake, so try that out.  Part of the invitation of Christmas is to awaken our shepherd-like curiosity to keep searching for Christ, who is also searching for us!  We pay attention to God, who is paying attention to you right now, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.  Do you feel a holy nudge in a certain direction or destination?  Maybe like the shepherds, you feel scared trying to go to a new place.  Or maybe you want to share God’s love in a new way, but, like the shepherds concerned about what others will think, you are holding back.  What tradition might stir within your heart, awakening you to the mystery and marvel of Christmas ~ even though the “actual” day is weeks/months away (“actual” because we don’t have Jesus’ birth certificate and we don’t know when he was born.  However, things can be true without happening exactly as I say.  There is a truth I cannot prove with evidence ~ things like love, hope, peace, and joy).  Today, practice Christmas.  Maybe you blare your stereo with music, make cookies for your neighbors, light a candle, or decorate a part of your house.  It doesn’t have to be splashy and spectacular.  Christ arrives quietly, barely noticed by anyone except a few shepherds.  You don’t have to inflate your 8-foot Santa Claus on your lawn, causing your neighbors to question you.  You can honor this day as holy and God-saturated because that is true of every day.  May you discover God in the most unexpected places and people this day.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

Even though it is, according to Google, 127 days until Christmas Eve, today I want to invite you to blast and blare a Christmas Carol (or many) from your stereo!  Pull out your favorite record, put on a beloved CD, or go into your music app to play that song list that has gathered dust since January.  Christmas Carols teach and tell us powerful truths about God’s entry into the world amid oppression, pain, discrimination, brokenness, and fear ~ if that sounds familiar, good!  God didn’t wait until the most optimal time; God didn’t do marketing research on the best location to launch a new product; and God didn’t ask for celebrity endorsements.  Nope.  God came amid the chaos and clutter of a political census that was for the purpose of Caesar to get richer and prove that when he said, “Jump”, you leapt and kept on leaping like the 12 Lords in the 12 Days of Christmas.  The first gleam of Christmas, one carol proclaims, is re-born with each new birth.  The hopes and dreams of all the years are met in Christ, not just on Christmas Eve, but with the setting of the sun each day.  Our souls are called to feel their worth and to recognize that each person is our sibling, as O Holy Night sings out.  Christmas Carols proclaims the good news of God’s love we are infused/inspired to share/shout from the mountains. 

 

As you blast and blare the Christmas Carols today, what lines/lyrics touch your soul?  Go ahead and post in the comment section and call me with your insights.  Perhaps today, you might hear the Christmas Carol differently because you are not as exhausted from the hustle and bustle of December.  Perhaps today, amid the warmth of the sun, God’s love incarnate casts a new light you had not heard/felt/experienced before.  Slow down.  Sit down.  Listen again and again to a favorite carol or two for a fresh insight you’ve missed before.  As mystics say, when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.  Let the Carols be your teacher today as God’s love ministers to you through the music/melody/meaning of Christmas Carols.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

As we savor how Advent isn’t only a season confined to the four weeks before Christmas Eve, we honor that active waiting is a faithful invitation throughout the weeks of any given year; let’s focus on the candles that are lit during Advent. 

What does hope sound like, not just in December as we sing about a Silent Night when all is calm, all is bright, but in summer with the sun shining bright?

What does peace feel like right now?  It might be the end of war, the ceasing of words from people that cause hate and fear that keep your soul on high alert.  How might peace be a flourishing that isn’t just quiet but also joyful, as in Psalm 100?  Peace, or shalom, is the well-being of all creation.

What does joy taste like today?  An ice cream cone, a sip of water, or feasting on a conversation with a family member or friend?

How is God’s love showing up right here and now in your life?  When was the last time you knew deep in your bones/soul that you are unconditionally and unceasingly loved?  How did that moment leave a residual energy fueling your life?

 

We light the candles during the dwindling daylight of December not just to light the way into the next year, but also to shine a light on what is needed to keep our faith growing and grounded.  What if hope, peace, joy, and love are not just words but active ways/ingredients for each day?  What if hope, peace, joy, and love are like the sun warming the soil of your soul to activate and animate your life?  What if these are both gifts from God each day (meaning every day is Christmas Day in God’s presence) and practices to share with others?  This receiving and giving dance that we are all called to part-take as we move about the day.

 

Where might hope led you and where might you share hope?  Be specific.  Where is peace welling up, and who might you drench with this gift from God?  Where is joy and love joining hands to bless you and others throughout the day ~ both in ways you can plan and be surprised as well.  God does surprise earth with heaven not just on one day in December, but every day we stay awake, alert, and aware of God’s presence in our lives.  Amen.

Advent in August

 

What are you waiting for?  That question can be asked in so many ways, with different tenors, textures, and tones.  Go ahead, say those five words aloud, each time, emphasizing a different word.  When I say to myself, “What are you waiting for?,” it makes my shy soul curl up like a frightened turtle.  Emphasizing the word, “what” is dripping with judgment ~ dripping like humidity on a hot Florida August day.  But when I gently say, almost with a whisper, “What are you waiting for?”  Try that right now, softly/gently say those words so you can barely hear, emphasizing the word, “you”.  When I do that, I sense curiosity, openness, and wonderment about where/when/how am I waiting?  Maybe today you are waiting for the doctor to call, words from others that squall, for resolution of the things you haul, and trying to dust yourself off from the fall.  Everyone, as Dr. Seuss prophetically proclaimed, is waiting.

 

In the church calendar, we have a season called Advent that is about spiritually waiting.  These are the four Sundays before Christmas Day.  During Advent, we light four candles, one each Sunday, that we say help us prepare for God’s grand arrival in a barn on Christmas Eve.  We call the candles: hope, peace, joy, and love.  These are audacious names given the external evidence of the news you read each day.  Hope?  Really, in a world of deep divisions, where we struggle to know what is real?  Or maybe we’ve been taught and told to delay joy until we’ve earned/deserve it ~ like God’s joy is some vacation that we’ve got to work a certain number of hours before we can take.  Or how do you practice peace in the face of war and violence?  

 

The church year cannot be confined by a calendar.  Just because Advent falls at the end of the year, the themes of Advent can visit you no matter the date or weather outside your window.  Advent offers us the meta-narrative of both waiting and preparing.  The waiting of Advent isn’t passive, nor is it scurrying, hurrying, flurrying around like we must look busy because Jesus is coming!!  However, the culture at Christmas is very much preaching a gospel of more and cramming another party/event/concert/gathering into your calendar before this year is finished.  Prayerful waiting, watching your life for God to show up in the least likely place (because if God decides a barn is the setting/scene for a grand entry- doesn’t that give us pause for how God continues to show up in our lives?).  God comes in the vulnerability of a baby.  God’s arrival doesn’t stop all oppression immediately; Caesar is still on the throne as Mary nurses Jesus.  God’s arrival doesn’t immediately right all wrongs. 

 

God moves slowly, intentionally, thoughtfully ~ like we are waiting for a turtle. 

 

What are you waiting for right now in this moment, in this season, on this day?  May that prayerful question meet you in the Advent of August this week.  Amen.

Known

 

Transcending, transitioning, and transforming One, as we explore how You know us fully, help us be brave and bold in claiming our lives.  Help us let go of feelings of shame or blame, knowing that those are human responses.  There is no brokenness You cannot redeem, repair, and restore.  Help us know the power of forgiveness of others and ourselves.  Remind us that forgiving is an act of love that is needed in a world that is too caught up in eye-for-eye justice, and even worse.  God, we are determined to win and show that we are boss, regardless of who the bomb kills or words wound.  We are far from Eden.  This homelessness creates restlessness within us, like the Prodigal Son who found himself in the muck of life.  Call us back to ourselves.  Call us back to You.  Call us back to our connections which are where love can be expressed, explored and experienced in new ways.  Bless us with Your presence and peace this day and throughout this month.  Amen.