Mama Eternal’s Lent

I was dreading Lent this year, which is not like me. I usually love Lent. Don’t get me wrong, I also love king cake with naked plastic babies inside, and pancakes, and alcohol but when all that is over, I want my ashes and solemnity and a dark, difficult Lenten season. Ah, the season of penitence, of self-examination, of denial and wilderness wandering – what a gift to spend forty days dedicated to self-reflection. As a one on the Enngeagram, I’m all for exposing my faults and trying to somehow become less terrible. But this year has been different – I was already feeling the wilderness and was having difficulty looking forward to more wandering.

I’m already in sackcloth and ashes, thank you very much, church calendar. Now I get to focus on it all the damn time for 40 days. Repent. I am dirt. I get it.

Then I was introduced to Mama Eternal. Barely into the season, I stumbled onto a TedTalk  given by Rev. Dr. James Forbes, retired pastor of the revolutionary and legendary Riverside Church in NYC, on compassion. He spoke of how he learned the lived definition of compassion  at the table prepared by his mother and father each night. With eight children, there were some nights when someone hadn’t made it home on time. Yet no one was ever left out. His mother’s compassion and care for the 10 people gathered at the table became a powerful vision of the compassionate God – Mama Eternal.

Mama God. Mama Eternal. This is the God who looks around the world table and asks those of us children enjoying the blessings set before us, “Are all the children in?”. You, bellied up to the table, getting your needs met, “Where is your brother?” “Where is your sister?” Is this not one of the earliest questions God poses in the ancient stories (Genesis 4)? We do not exist as solitary beings. We fully exist only as we live and love together.

I am because we are.

Compassion is lived out as we partner with God to love one another. Just as Mama Forbes asked the children seated at the table about those missing, Mama Eternal asks us to look after one another, to serve one another and to include one another. It is not enough that I live and provide for myself, that I put food in my own mouth, or even pass it to my left. I must remember the ones still making their way to the table.

The children who had already made it to the table had to fix a plate for those who had not yet made it home. The ones who did not yet share in the blessings of the table were not shammed. They were not despised. They were remembered. They were honored. In fact, they were served first. All of Mama’s children were provided for. No one was left behind.

This Lent, some of us are feasting on the bounty of Mama Eternal’s compassion. Other children don’t (yet) have access to the table. The feast has been prepared. She prepares a feast that meets all our needs for food, water, relationship, community, love, meaningful work, equality and more – a feast of shalom. Yet, sometimes we fix plates for ourselves, refuse to pass plates and neglect to set aside a portion for the ones we cannot see.  Some children may need plates that satisfy emotional hunger. Some may need plates that satisfy physical hunger. Some may need plates that heal from deep, system-wide hunger. Some may need to put less on their plate and pass the potatoes a bit more. It is not enough that I that I put food in my own mouth, or even pass it to my left. I must remember the ones still making their way to the table.

As I wander through the Lent-y wilderness right now, scratched and scraped by the branches of my own faults, taking wrong turns, wounded by the poison flowers of systemic sin, the thought of Mama Eternal looking for me around the table, instructing my brothers and sisters to keep my plate warm, rekindles my hope. At times when I find myself at the table, I will set aside something nourishing for someone else. When you have the privilege of sitting down, what will you do? Mama Eternal has prepared a table for you and I – for all the children. From a deep well of compassion she asks…

Are all the children in?