positive<\/em> opportunity\u2014to attend in a special way to one\u2019s relation to God.\u201d<\/p>\nThe following year, at our meeting just before Ash Wednesday, I posed the annual question. Bill\u2019s answer was the same as the previous year\u2019s, but with an addition: \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to clean up this office!\u201d Yes indeed, his office was always a mess of papers, mail, piles of magazines and books. I affirmed teasingly that cleaning it would be a good Lenten discipline for him.<\/p>\n
Then I told him my own little plans. \u201cI\u2019m hoping this Lent to be more consciously grateful: to thank people, to cultivate affirmative responses to people\u2014especially to my husband! And at dinner each night, George and I are going to start off talking about where in particular\u2014in one certain place or moment or experience of the day\u2014each of us did see God and give thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill nodded his sweet smiling assent\u2014his blessing (as I always saw it).<\/p>\n
But then he added, \u201cWhere\u2019s the traditional trilogy in your Lent? Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I said: \u201cFor prayer, I\u2019m going to read a bit each day of Joan Chittester\u2019s Rule of Benedict<\/em> and then use it for a half hour of meditation. For fasting: Hmm, you know I can\u2019t do food-fasting. But I hope to fast from what keeps me from God\u2014for instance, moping.\u201d (My natural disposition is akin to Eeyore\u2019s.)<\/p>\nAgain, Bill nodded his assent. Then we talked a long time about the challenge of almsgiving. He habitually contributed lots of money to worthy organizations like Catholic Relief Services. But he confided feeling bad that he hadn\u2019t in his life done direct hands-on serving of the poor. And at that point of his life, with the physical limitations of arthritis and other ailments of aging, he couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
I protested: \u201cBill, you give so much of your special<\/em> gifts to others\u2014you\u2019re just so humble that you don\u2019t realize how much you give.\u201d But he persisted: \u201cThat\u2019s not the same.\u201d<\/p>\nAs for my own version of almsgiving: I said, \u201cI don\u2019t have much money, but I have time, and I try to give that to others directly. Like phoning a chronically ill neighbor a couple times a week to ask what she needs.\u201d Bill nodded sweetly again.<\/p>\n
A few years later, my monthly meeting with Bill happened to be around the middle of Lent. I asked him: \u201cDo you feel you\u2019ve gotten anywhere by this point in Lent?\u201d I knew it was a silly question, but needed to hear his response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the question to ask,\u201d he smiled gently. \u201cI don\u2019t think any more of \u2018getting somewhere\u2019 or even of taking a path; I don\u2019t care if I\u2019m on the right path or not. I just try to be attentive to God in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another year, just ten years ago, our meeting fell on the day after Ash Wednesday. I was still struggling with my natural Eeyore-like disposition. \u201cI\u2019m doing \u2018joy\u2019 this year for Lent, Bill. What do you think?\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded his approval. Then he added: \u201cRemember how we all sin, yet we all are graced.\u201d And he quoted Romans 5:20: But where sin was multiplied, grace immediately exceeded it.<\/em><\/p>\nWhen I got home that day, I wrote out this passage and put it on our kitchen table. It would be our reading before dinner each evening during Lent.<\/p>\n
This year, Lent finds George and me focusing on his recovery from open-heart surgery.<\/p>\n
Bill died last spring, but if he were here for me to ask his counsel about what to do for Lent, I\u2019m pretty sure he\u2019d say firmly: \u201cDon\u2019t add anything. George\u2019s recovery-process is your Lent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cSo what are you doing for Lent this year, Bill?\u201d This was my annual question to my spiritual director, Fr. Bill Shannon, for the twenty-five years that I went to him for monthly counsel. (I wrote about our relationship in a previous post.) When I posed the question in 1995, about ten years into our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1050,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15,1],"tags":[288,287],"class_list":["post-2521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-topical-categories","category-peggy-rosenthal","category-uncategorized","tag-grace","tag-lent"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2013\/02\/givinghands.jpg\" "\\"givinghands\\"")
<\/a>\u201cSo what are you doing for Lent this year, Bill?\u201d<\/p>\n