So today is Ash Wednesday. The day holds a lot of memories for me, including the death of my father. I wrote about it here.
Grief shows up in many ways, today it opted for listlessness. I could do all the things, but they felt like they lacked salt.
Additionally, I’ve been blessed the past two weeks to have two pieces published over at the Catholic Standard. Just before Saint Valentine’s Day, I wrote about “the most romantic year ever” when I discussed how a sacramental marriage is an ongoing journey into ever deeper love. We spent the evening at a couple’s retreat dinner, something we try to do every year. It’s a good way for the two of us to reconnect over the mission itself and has become a tradition.
Today, I posted a piece about Lenten resolutions. Oddly, I’ve struggled this year with settling on one. Going to early mass, I still found my heart wandering, restless, seeking the peace that comes with, if not succeeding, knowing what you’re going to attempt.
So I thought about what the “best Lenten” experiences were in my past. Volunteering to be a lecture for the stations of the cross was lovely until I wound up in the hospital with Covid. The year my dad died, my sister and I called each other back and forth every day for fourty days. It was restorative. Neither of us grieved alone. One year I attended daily mass and it was a lovely Lent. Another year, I volunteered with students with disbiilities and wound up pursuing it long after Lent ended.
The “bad Lents” were when I’d try to do too much. Give up caffiene, bread, chocolate, tv, internet, pray the rosary, chaplet and go to daily mass meant one of those things got done each day but never with any consistency or continuity. Why, when I know the reality –pick one and stick to it, did I self sabotage from the get go so many times?
Because that too, is part of the fallen nature we explore and confront when we enter into Lent.
So now I sit with ashes on my head, wandering in the desert of my mind, seeking to figure out what I should be doing so I can start doing it. Fatigue and the desire to “do something,” battle. Fatigue today wins and somehow, I feel weaker for it.
At school, we are teaching the book, “Just Mercy,” by Bryan Stephenson. The man has a moral clarity about the dignity of the human person that I’m in awe of. In his “Ted Talk” on injustice, he reminds his audience, “We won’t be judged by our intellect, technology, design. You dont judge a society by how they treat the rich , the powerful, the privileged You judge the character of a society by how they treat the poor, the condemned, the incarcerated. Because it is in that nexus we understand truly profound things about who who we are.” and I realized, I’d been defining my days, good and bad, by my success or failure.
That turned all things into a zero sum game. Teaching, like parenting, like writing, like all things worth doing, is a process and a series of steps that include backsteps and backsliding, mistakes and misteps. Being committed to living and being a person who serves, who longs to be a disciple, demands I let myself wrestle with my failures, and not linger on the successes. The “dark and difficult things” must be worked through.
Lent isn’t about success, it’s about seeking. Lent isn’t about speaking or presenting, it’s about listening and being present. Fasting is a means of quieting the body, and I needed to remember that. So I wrote down my resolution. I read it. If nothing else, the ego that wanted to do everything somehow, needed to be starved, and that was the reality I needed to remember.
Orienting the spirit to always pay attention to suffering, to exclusion, to unfairness, to injustice, is the goal. Orienting towards the poor, would likewise, orient my spirit towards Christ. So going into Lent, what am I going to do? Walk into the desert.
Everything else will follow.
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