Why Do Lent?

The Lenten Whole40 Experiment has begun! I, along with ten other brave souls, have started the Lenten practices of fasting and feasting week to week, with self-reflection and community support along the way. I am eager to hear how it’s going for others.

As for me, I have to confess, I thought we were starting pretty easy, that I would breeze through this week’s challenges. Not so much. I have loved being more intentional about my water intake, getting more sleep, and eating my meals more mindfully. My body is grateful to feel better rested, hydrated, and nourished.

But I had no idea I was such a prolific, largely unconscious, snacker! I keep catching myself perusing the shelves of my pantry, wanting to polish off the snacks in the boys’ lunch boxes, or trying to justify adding snacks to my meals. I’ve been ruminating on the question, What technically counts as a snack? code for, How can I find a work around? And surprise, surprise, I’ve been hungry, at times hangry!

Of course, that’s part of the point of the experiment. It’s not about self-denial for the sake of self-denial. It’s about examining our true hunger and thirst, and paying attention to what is truly nourishing. In those moments I catch myself craving my boys’ Doritos (ok, maybe I DID eat the crumbs out of the bottom of the bag) or feeling bummed I have to turn down the birthday cookie cake, I feel my hunger more profoundly, and I feel more grateful for the good food I get to enjoy at meal time.

It is easy with Lent, and with other religious traditions and rituals, to get so focused on the WHAT that we lose sight of the WHY. As a youth, I remember giving up French fries for Lent one year. Then, when friends offered to share theirs with me, I would abjectly respond, “No, I can’t. I gave them up for Lent.”  {Sigh} I did love fries and it felt hard at the time to go forty days without any. But when you read Matthew 6:1-18, (often read on Ash Wednesday), which begins, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. . . ” you can see I pretty much missed the point.   If I’m honest, what I was really doing was giving the appearance of being “spiritual,” while secretly hoping my Lenten practice would bode well for my figure come swimsuit season.

Oh, well, we all start somewhere. I, of course, had no real concept of my own mortality. Nor the accompanying awareness of how fragile, yet precious our lives are. I thought I had all the time in the world. Now, I painfully, beautifully, know otherwise.

So being marked with ashes on Ash Wednesday, hearing the sober truth, “From dust you came, and to dust you shall return.” has become an annual wake up call. Between ashes and ashes, I am given the Breath of life. What a gift! And then Lent becomes a season to ask myself important questions:

What am I doing with my life?

Am I spending my time, energy, and resources on what truly gives life to myself and others?

Am I conscious of my deep hunger for Love and Love’s longing for me?

How do I wander away, seduced by substitutes that will never truly satisfy?

What distracts or numbs or tempts me to forget who and Whose I am?

How can I live in a more perpetual awareness of God‘s love for me and offer myself to join God in the healing of the world?

I am grateful for Lenten practices – prayer, self-observation, fasting and feasting, and a community of kindred spirits to focus my awareness on the gift of life, and to give space to ask ourselves essential questions.

How are you observing this Lent? Whether it’s through fasting from something that distracts you, being more intentional about a daily prayer practice, giving time and treasure to help relieve our suffering neighbors, I hope we do not lose sight of the WHY. Lent is a season to remember, to return, to repent, which is a church-y word meaning to change the direction we are seeking life. More important even than the WHY, I hope we remember the WHO, a God who, like the prodigal father in Luke 15, is just waiting, waiting, waiting for us to come to our senses, to come Home and feast on the love that will never let us go.