March continues our journey through the Lenten season, the forty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter, in which we are invited to deepen our spiritual lives. How are you preparing for the healing hope of Holy Week and Easter? How are you and God doing these long winter evenings? Where is your hope residing?
The late Peter Gomes of Harvard’s Memorial Church suggested three things we might do to “keep a good Lent”: silence, study, and service. These three practices can be a way to help us move through this metaphorical wilderness, which is our Lent. These forty days of deep discernment were ones in which Jesus confronted the ego’s insatiable desire for control, power, fame, and narrowly focused gain. By saying “no” to these ego desires, he was freed to move into the healing of the life of the soul, with its deep caring for the self as an aspect of the whole creation of which we are all a part. These practices may be done for as little as five minutes a day, or twenty or thirty minutes a few times a week, as we become more adept at understanding how they offer meaning, hope, healing, and depth in our lives.
The first is keeping a time of silence. Taking time for silence each day in order to listen to our soul speaking is daunting for most of us. With our focus taken up by the noise all around us, we run through or even run from this silence, which can itself be the revelation of deeper meaning in our lives. The symbols and metaphors that may open new depths for us are left unexplored as we skim along the surface of life, open only to the concrete, literal experiences. Then we wonder why we long for more depth and intimacy in our lives, which only taking time can give to us.
The second is study. This simply means taking a few moments to read some devotional writing, Scripture, or something outside of ourselves that can give us a new perspective. Through study we may understand more about God’s yearning to offer mercy, love, and justice to us and our world. To study is to open ourselves to learning something new, to develop a larger perspective than one we currently hold.
The third is service. In service, we take the love and justice which God offers and allow it to stir our hearts to reach out into the world. One little act of kindness can change the world. Here we begin to understand the reality that serving one another is a way of deepening our own lives by showing our love and care. “Love one another, as I have loved you,” is the new commandment that Jesus has given us. To serve is to make ourselves available for caring for the world, which has been given to us as a gift in creation, our garden that we are invited to tend lovingly, with heart.
May we share with one another how we are trying to “keep a good Lent.” Let’s deepen the good news about how these simple devotional acts are changing our lives and our community as we journey through Lent to the hope that is Easter.