I love Lent.
Which yes, is kind of weird. But I know I'm not the only person who does! Part of it is that I'm one of those people that Barbara Brown Taylor calls "lunar Christians" and seasons like Lent and Advent are made for people who like to sit in the dark and ponder their doubts. The other reason, maybe, is that Lent is a time for doing less--eating less, boozing less, Facebooking less, whatever, in order to make more space for Good in our lives. For me, more space for God usually includes going to church more.
This year, though, there were out-of-state travels to see people I love, David being on-call on Sunday mornings and so unable to help wrangle kids in the pew, stomach viruses, and a new very part time job (that nevertheless occupied a lot of head space, especially the first few weeks). And I actually ended up going to church less than usual.
At first this really bothered me. But I still kept my little fast and added a discipline that I didn't entirely fail, and I've ended this Lent with a sort of peaceful resignation--I'm not Super Christian Lady, and that's ok.
I tried reading through the entire New Testament with the read of the congregation. I didn't finish (I got bogged down in Romans, which reminded me way too much of a really unproductive and spiritually pedantic stage in my life) but it was good anyway. I read the Message version, to try to keep away from any automatic responses to passages I've read so many times before, in very different contexts.
Galatians, of all places, had the most to say to me this year.
4-6 "I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.
(...)
25-26 Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it as an idea in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original."
Happy Easter, all you marvelous originals!
