Before I reflect on the beginning of this year's Lenten season, I am going to copy and paste what I wrote last year the day after Ash Wednesday: Let me say, first, that I am incredibly disappointed in how my Lent began. Last night I had to miss the Ash Wednesday service at Revolution because I had been at a birth since 1:30 in the morning and I was driving back home from the hospital during the service.
I had this idea in my head that Lent was going to be different this year because I was going to start it with the sacredness, the ritual, and the solemnity of an Ash Wednesday service. As I walked out of the service with the ashen cross swathed upon my forehead, I was going to walk through the portals of the sad beauty of Lent and into 40 days of quiet reflection and simplicity, and, perhaps, a bit of poetic melancholy.
Instead, at 7:00 last night, I was driving home, and I was exhausted, I was disheveled, I was hungry. I had witnessed a miracle that evening, for sure, and I don’t want to trivialize that. I had seen the wonder and beauty and sacredness of birth somehow unfolding under the artificial glare of a birth room spotlight. My experience at that birth was valuable and useful and beautiful and sacred, and if I had actually had the choice of attending the birth or attending the Ash Wednesday service I would have chosen the birth.
But I think that I had hoped for Ash Wednesday to be a magic pill that I would have had brushed across my forehead rather than swallowed.
But the thing is…while I wish I could have attended the service, it would not have been a magic pill. Perhaps I would have walked out of the service last night feeling peaceful and solemn, but this morning I would have woken up to my real life–the noisy, disorganized, crazy one. And then I would have felt disappointed that the magic feeling had faded away. And then I could have felt disillusioned. And then I might have given up.
Instead, my Lent beginning has been more fitting: it has begun in chaos rather than quietness. The quietness and the sacredness and the reflection of Lent are going to have to come with work. I have to carve it out of my day and into my heart. There is no Ash Thursday service to escape to tonight. It’s just my life, and the beautiful mess of it.
And so today, my Lenten season roots itself in a life that is blown about in the winds of chaos and battered by some uncertain storms. My hope and my prayer is that the holiness of this Lenten season plants itself in my heart and that it grows, and that I grow, and that, perhaps by Easter, something sacred within me will have bloomed.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen
I copy and paste those sentences from last year because apparently...I am not the most avid learner.
Tonight is Ash Wednesday. I am, yet again, on call for a birth, and I thought that perhaps I would miss this service again. Honestly, this time I was more at peace with that idea than I was last year, because I am incredibly excited to be part of the truly sacred experience of a homebirth with a wonderful person and friend. But I didn't get the call, so I left the clutter, picked Matt up from work, and we all sped over to church....where, I was convinced, I would sit in my pew, hold Matt's hand, breathe deeply, sing beautiful old hymns, listen to a moving sermon, walk forward for my forehead to be swathed in ashes, and then I would quietly leave, with my soul at peace, my heart and rest, and my mind resolved to journey down the beautifully melancholy path of Lent armed with my fasting, my faith, and my God. Then, I would go home, and, in honor of this holy season, my floor would magically be removed of Spiderman toys, scattered books, and stray socks. It might somehow smell like incense too, just to really set the mood. And I would turn on my computer and not be tempted by Facebook and blogs, from which I am fasting this Lenten season. Also, I would not repeat the failures of the past years. I wouldn't ever skip a day of Organic God: Lenten Meditations on the Words of Jesus. I would get up early to spend time with God. I would be spending all of that extra Facebook time praying or reading the Bible or feeding the starving children in my city. I would walk through my home radiating peace and joy and hope.
But...did you read the above post from last year?
That's not the way it works.
This year, I swallowed that "magic pill" of an Ash Wednesday service.
And I choked.
Here's what did happen. I did, in fact, sit in my pew. I did, every once in awhile, catch hold of Matt's hand, but he was so busy hopping up and down checking on Jack (and bless him for that--he knew how much this service meant to me, and he was trying to shield me from a distracting 3-year-old so I could experience at least some distant relative of peace). I actually did love harmonizing to the beautiful, old hymns, when I wasn't peeking over my shoulder checking on Jack, who was totally clueless as to the day's holy bent. I did hear most of Eric's sermon, but again, I was so distracted by that little boy of mine that I just couldn't sink into the words and let them challenge and encourage me. I did walk forward to have my forehead swathed in ashes, but I had Jack perched on one hip, and he was heavy, and somehow the experience just didn't seem quite as holy while lugging 30-lbs of wiggling weight. And I did leave, but not exactly quietly, because Jack was balking, and I couldn't find Matt and Amélie, and by the time I got to the car (actually, that's not true--I felt it coming on during the sermon), I really just wanted to bang my ashen forehead against my car dashboard and cry a very unholy, unwieldy, awkward, and completely unpeaceful cry.
And now here I am, yet again, beginning Lent with the harsh reminder that Lent is lived within the mess and muck and chaos. How I long to carry out the beauty of Lent poetically. That's what my soul longs for. But then.... But then.... But then I am worshipping the poetry of Lent rather than the God of Lent. And if I can journey through this Bright Sadness with a little grace, if I can find a little more light in the shadows of my soul's chiaroscuro, and if I can carve out for myself a bit more peace, I do believe that I will find some poetry in this beautiful mess, this chiaroscuro of my soul, this bright sadness. And then I will be ready, I hope--oh, how I hope--to embrace the joy and the awakening and the new life of Easter.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen
Peace.
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