Lent: a clearing season

My interest in Lent started a number of years ago. My friend Luanne who has a weekly column in our local paper wrote about her observance of Lent and its value in one's life by imposing discipline in areas that need tending. At that point of my life I was a reading addict -- my leisure time was consumed with reading at the expense of other things in my life. Sometimes I would use it as a form of escape; other times simply as a preferred form of entertainment. Night after night I would read voraciously. Luanne's column on Lent inspired me to do a reading fast. I limited myself to reading whatever I needed for daily purposes, the Bible, and her weekly column. I don't remember the details of what ensued for me, only a sense of its having been a good thing and something I wanted to do again.

In the years since, I have practiced Lent in varying degrees. Usually it has been an effort to discipline an area of my life that has gotten out of balance. It has provided incentive for restoring equilibrum. Some years, my Lenten practice has been more fulfilling than others. I think I am learning more about how to use it as a tool for deepening my walk with God. It's as if I were first a toddler and had to learn how to walk, and each successive year finds me at a new place and better skilled at doing this. Hopefully, it means I am growing spiritually, and each new year finds me closer to the One Whom I desire to draw closer to.

This year has been my most satisfying Lent yet. I am redoing a book that I had done in part last year. Suasn Parsons' a clearing season provides a guide for the Lenten journey. Every week has an exercise to do throughout the week, each building on the previous. Its premise is to use Lent as a time of clearing space in our crowded lives for deeper relationship with Christ. Parsons focuses on using this time of discipline to discover natural rhythms in our life; on opening ourselves to facing the "wild beasts" in our own wilderness, like Jesus did when He was driven there by the Spirit. It is a good thing to examine one's heart to see what all is reigning there - its fears, its desires, its idols. All the things that drive our actions and control our lives but that we pay little attention to in the hurried business of living. Our hearts are full of "wild beasts" that we cater to day after day. They keep us from living the abundant life Jesus intends us to have. They devour huge chunks of our life with our hardly being aware of what is happening. They hold the kingdom of heaven at bay.

Sitting with these wild beasts in one's personal wilderness is a good experience. It helps one to become intentional about living. And at reevaluating and restructuring as needed. At seeing if the path we are on is leading us to the place we want to be. For me, this year has led to my spending more time with things that tap into my true interests and feed my spirit in deeply satisfying ways. I am doing more things that lead me to the place I want to go. I am liking it so well that I want to make this year's Lenten discipline a regular part of my life.

As we sit with the reality of ourselves and start clearing out space in our lives for God, it opens up a desire to be more like Him. Created in His image, we, like Him, have a desire to create. Being creative can take any number of forms. It may be something as simple as opening our soul to the unique beauty embodied in the personality of each person around us, the people we meet on a daily basis and hardly see. Or opening our senses to really seeing, tasting, smelling all the things our Creator has made for our pleasure. For fully grasping the beauty of every aspect of our day from each bite of food we savour to every person God brings across our path in the course of a day. Every moment of our day can become a holy moment, an encounter with Him in Whom we live and move and have our being.

My Lenten journey this year has awakened a talent that has long lain dormant. Years ago I used to do some writing: some poetry, bits and pieces of this and that. But for a long time now, I have had little interest in putting any thoughts on paper. I would rarely do it except on sporadic occasions. This was strange, because all my life I have loved words and language. I love the nuances of words and the magic they can wreak in one's heart. But there was little desire to write, despite my ability to do so. It was like a closed door that I was quite content to leave unopened.

But lately, that has changed. All of a sudden I have all sorts of things I want to write. God is probably laughing: a year or so ago, my friend Naomi asked if I blogged; "No," I replied, completely uninterested. I was pretty certain that bug would never inflict me. Ha! as if we can ever know what we will or won't do in life if we sit long enough with our Creator Who fashioned us and ever draws us to Him.

Embracing Otherness

(n) otherness, distinctness, separateness (the quality of being not alike; being distinct or different from that otherwise experienced or known)

I remember experiencing otherness at various stages of my life: as a little Mennonite girl climbing onto the public school bus; in my large family where I often retreated to a fantasy world; within my culture where fitting in was paramount to acceptance and being different was tantamount to rebellion. My otherness created a sense of loneliness that I buried deep in the recesses of my heart.

I learned to hide my otherness from the hoi polloi, to allow it to surface only in safe places. But it was always just beneath the surface, ebbing and flowing; sometimes simmering, sometimes seething. And occasionally it would erupt in a geyser of full blown Otherness. It had a mind of its own: at times it was the bane of my soul, other times it was a banquet of soul food. It made life unbearable; it made life worth living. It was capricious. And it rebelled at being squelched.

To thrive as its Creator intended, the human spirit needs to live authentically. If the truth of Christ is to make us free indeed, we must walk in truth - Christ's Truth and the truth of our own heart. Jesus said that doing this will require sacrifice; that it may mean leaving those we love. But that He will give us rest if we come to Him. Ah, rest. What one's heart longs for. What God crowned His days of creation with. What He invites us to enter.

For many years I lived in a place of unrest. My spirit longed for something more, but knew not how to find it. Gradually and gently, the Lord led me to the well of Truth. He showed me that the otherness in my spirit is from Him. That it is His way of bringing me to Him; that to fully know Him, I must embrace my otherness. That otherness is a Good Thing.

So now I am in the season of embracing my otherness, of becoming intimate with its idiosyncracies and owning them fully. It is a place of joy; it is a place of pain; it is Home. I love this place; it is where my spirit has longed to be. But the cost of living here is steep: it means not being understood. It means challenging the status quo. It means being content to live as a pilgrim and a stranger, desiring it even. Being in the world, but not of it. And, paradoxically, it means knowing Peace; Peace that passeth all understanding.

Embracing Otherness - ah! this is Sabbath. This is Rest.

It is good to be Home.