For Those Who Are Ambivalent About Lent

Lent feels strange to me this year. Maybe it’s the overall climate, which feels like we are, without our consent, giving up a whole lot of things already. This doesn’t help when I tend to have an already rather estranged relationship with this particular liturgical season.

Yes, it’s the original sin bits. They seem to creep in so pervasively, like pesky little weeds, and sometimes it feels like they nearly choke out the other stuff growing beautifully in the garden. But there IS good stuff growing, I think. And so, if you’re just wanting a way into that part of the garden, to imagine what this could look like for you, I get that. I’m there, also.

It’s worth just stating outright that you don’t have to observe Lent, at all. (And some of you reading this aren’t Christian! Sorry for the insider post.) The early church didn’t have it and they were fine. It’s a tradition, and I think it can be a rich one. But if it isn’t for you, even just this year, it isn’t for you.

So, here are some things I feel can be good and fruitful about Lent. What wisdom does this Lenten season teach us?

photo by Zach Lucero, Unsplash. Photo is of a pile of ashes on a white countertop.

We are mortal, human, finite, and loved. We come from the earth, and we will return to it. In between those places, we have been given breath, life, this singular human experience. It is precious in part because it is fleeting. So much of our culture denies death, avoids it, rejects it, even. Ash Wednesday names its certain reality for us, but it does so in the context of blessed earth, made in to blessed bodies, beloved by God. These ashes tell us that we are loved and yet not invincible, cherished and yet not in charge, delighted in and yet not divas. We become right-sized in this sacramental act. And it is needed, when so many around us are either acting too small or too big for our britches. Sometimes we act like both in the span of a single day. The ashes don’t have much time for that. They speak their truth plainly. We are wise to listen.