Lent Thought, Wednesday 12th March I’ve never been a huge fan of Lent. Maybe because I’m a creative. I love beautiful things. Magic. Excitement. A little bit of sparkle. 40 days of quiet, dark reflection just seems a bit much. Especially at this time of year, when the sun has barely raised its head and we could all do with some fun. Easter is different. I love Easter. That’s some serious sparkle, right there. A resurrection, angels in the garden and, at St Laurence at least, the chance to build Jerusalem out of cardboard boxes, branches and paint every year on Good Friday. I’ve just never got on with Lent. I’ve never felt the need for a season of focusing on sadness and pain and being betrayed. Alongside a bunch of friends who are crankier than usual because they’ve all given up coffee. All of them. At the same time. Whose bright idea was that? The truth is that most of us understand sadness, pain and betrayal much better than we’d like. We live with illness and worries and disappointment every day. No matter how hard we pretend that we’re fine. This year it struck me. Perhaps that’s the point. Not the giving up coffee or chocolate or social media, or whatever the trend may be. Perhaps the point is that we have a solid 40 days to focus on the dark areas of our lives. The sadness. The worry. The family member who is drifting away. The career that hasn’t delivered as we expected. The health worries that we can’t ignore any longer. The confusion. The anger. The pain. A solid 40 days to admit that actually, shit happens. To every single one of us. And that’s ok. It’s normal. And sometimes we need to embrace it, sit with it, feel it in all it’s gut-wrenching torturous misery before we can come out the other side. Not even Jesus was fine all the time. In the garden, he cried so hard that he sweated blood. His closest friends betrayed him. Publicly. He was, at the very last hour, utterly forsaken by everyone. Alone. Tortured. Dead. He gets it. 40 days to wallow in misery is not my cup of tea. 40 days to sit, embracing my reality in all its messiness, with someone who completely understands, might just change my life.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 07:08:19 +0000