A Daily Lent

Finding a Way in the Desert Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 4, 2020 Cummings’ words below are hard to accept. Western Christians, including contemplatives, are more often than not shaped more by culture and prevailing norms than we are by scripture and our mystical/contemplative Christian tradition. Even my labeling, this week in these blog posts, of the current COVID-19 crisis as a “ desert experience ” to some extent adopts a cultural understanding of the situation. After all, we are fond of naming things, and most every name for something, someone, or some experience carries with it some inherent judgements. And the words “desert experience” suggest something harsh or to be avoided, at least for most of us. This is not to deny that the threat around us currently is real, nor am I suggesting that we not approach it with sobriety. Most certainly we should treat these days seriously. But I sense that much of our anxiety and desert feelings stem not only from the ...

Is God Absent? Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 3, 2020 During the current moment’s COVID-19-induced alteration of rhythms and life-practices, with the onset of fear and uncertainty, I’m hearing people talk about God’s apparent absence. “ Where is God now? ” “ How could God allow this pandemic? ” “ Why doesn’t God do something? ” All are legitimate questions, probably ones that have crossed all our minds at some point, a quick, fleeting thought. Perhaps those expressions are healthy in a time like this. I know they certainly don’t shake God. In fact, I’m confident they say more about us than they say about God. You’ve heard people say, perhaps, “God showed up in this situation or in that event!” We have our own notions of how God is present, sometimes measured by some external results that come from the event, or sometimes by our own goose-bumpy feelings about the situation. Not to completely discredit any of that, but God is bigger than all those feelings or ta...

Trusting God in the Desert Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 2, 2020 In exploring the desert experience this week, we have drawn parallels between the desert and where we find ourselves in dealing with COVID-19 . . . physical distanced and separated from others, with altered routines, and with many of our usual coping strategies no longer available to us. We’ve talked about our tendency to seek an escape from the difficulty that is right before us. The fight or flight syndrome is real . . . right now, flight is not an option . . . while our best fight against this enemy is to stay home and do nothing that feels productive. Psychologists talks about escapism as a desire or behavior to ignore, evade, or avoid reality. Some of our escapism takes the form of some physical action . . . we go on a shopping spree, we travel, we drink excessively . . . we actually DO something to ignore, evade, or avoid reality. Some of our escapism is mental or emotional . . . we withdra...

From Resistance to Compassion Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 1, 2020 We naturally respond to difficult days by resisting them . . . we push against them, run from them, or distract ourselves in the midst of them. But the desert does not budge against our resistance. It is one thing to resist a highly contagious virus, a needed thing. But to resist the days within the desert means that we don’t take time or energy to live fully the days. I try to regularly check in with myself when I’m in the desert – and these days, we’re all in the desert. • What does it feel like to be me today? • What or who has God brought into my life? And how shall I love them? • What opportunities are arising in the desert that would not ordinarily present themselves? • How can I support or care for others from my physical distance from them? • How is God inviting me to offer my life for the healing and good of the world? I find that when I check in with myself regularly when I’m in...

Be Present to the Desert Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 31, 2020 The desert feels arid, uncomfortable. We wish we could be somewhere else. We long for life to be different. And this is exactly where we find ourselves during these days . . . in this desert we call coronavirus, physical distancing, and lockdown. We want to run, to get away . . . we want things to be the way they used to be . . . we distract ourselves to keep the daily news at arm’s length. In short, we find different ways dream of escaping the desert. This desire to escape is not unique to our time in the desert. In ordinary life, we can tend towards escape, as well. But whether it happens in the desert or in normal, everyday life, our desire to escape essentially represents our resistance to the place we are at that moment. This is a continual temptation in the spiritual life . . . to resist the present by fleeing to the past or running off to the future. Simply put, this posture means we are not...

God in the Desert Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 30, 2020 Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic seems to be all that is on anyone’s mind at the moment. We are experiencing a sobering moment in time. Where is God in this moment? Where is God in any desert experience? It is one thing to affirm in normal times that God is present always and everywhere. In these edge experiences that press hard on us, though, we may find that our usual felt experience of God is missing. We don’t have the same sense of God as we ordinarily do. Often we find that what Cummings calls, “the purifying action of the desert experience” centers around our notions of God. In other words, the expectations and beliefs we have built up around God – who God is, how God is, where God is, and so on – in ordinary days gets tested, even purified, and the desert experience presses hard on those assumptions. In fact, a shift in our image of God may very well be what comes from a desert experience such as th...

We Are in the Desert Sunday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 29, 2020 The entire contemporary world has been thrown into an experience of desert. All our usual norms and routines have been upended by a highly infectious virus. We are in uncharted territory, as “experts” remind us day by day, trying to stay true to best practices, and yet on ground that is unfamiliar – and highly uncomfortable – for most all of us. That we are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic during Lent is its own irony – or the mark of God’s mysterious provision! Someone texted me yesterday to say, “ This is the lentiest Lent I’ve ever lented .” The season of Lent actually parallels the 40 days spent by Jesus in the desert (Mt. 4:1 – 11) after his baptism in the Jordan River. The days of fasting and facing the temptations of the adversary prepared him for the onset of his ministry and confirmed the word he heard at his baptism: “ This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased ,” (Mt. 3:17). As...