It’s Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Quadrigesima. I can’t let such a day pas by without writing about it. I’m one of those people who believes not only that the unexamined life isn’t worth living, but that if it hasn’t been examined, it hasn’t been lived. Iyt’s like me to start a new season and say:what are we doing today? What do we want to get out of it? To hear the readings and demand: what do I accept? What do I reject? Can I accept all of it for once? Can I embrace this whole thing? Though it plays in my mind, when I see it on the page the obvious problem is clear: a lot of I. A lot of I judgment and I assessment. A lot of I digging to the bottom of things.
The first thing is, though my Christianity may be maverick,
though I am home alone today, Christianity is corporate. The very nature of
religion has always been that it is communal. We have more than privileged the
individual in our society, but this is really a joke because we are not prizing
individualism, what is done now is much like the wolf with the sheep. The
powers that be are separating people, giving them an increased sense of
isolation and faux independence as if to pick them off one by one, pick them
off for economic explanation, for commercialism, for insecurity, a whole circle
of vermin chasing their own tails so that in the end the wolf of greed and
consumerism consumes us. This isolation is not the same thing as becoming the
self. The rank selfishness which threatens to eat us is not the same thing self
knowledge and self fulfillment and isolation is not the same thing as solitude.
You may be a monk or a witch in the wood. You may have gone off to find your
God in secret. Churches and religious communities make me feel intensely lonely
and so I avoid them. But religion is still corporate. When Moses walked into
the dark cloud he did for
Then there is the other business, the seemingly sensible desire to control if not all things, well then, a few, to say: what are we doing here today? I have to see it. Perceive it, have an answer. As modern and Protestant as it is, more Anal than Anglican, it has a point. One should approach ones religions practices with open ear, open ear, intention and purpose. One should be able to admit why they have come here, attended this instead of walking around in what is a false cloud of unknowing. But what do we do with the unknowing that remains?
There are goals. I don’t come to Lent with no ambitions. For the first time in a long time, after lots of prayers, I have an ambition to go someplace else and a desire to make a home there. I hope that over this season that ambition for a new life is fired up, and a new place opens up for me. I hope to see more clearly the next steps. For years I was ambivalent to Jesus and to Catholicism. This Lent I wish to draw closer to both. I read an essay about Lent and the Christian life this morning. I wasn’t totally on board with it. I want to know how much I will or should be on board. Over the years, heterodox as I am, I am more than a Christian. I want all my devotional ties to deepen in this season.
But beyond my wants is simply coming to this day and letting it do its work. If we really believe in God, if we really believe in the power of a season, we will come to it and wait for what it has to teach. I used to think it was all about me, that I must make things happen, learn more, get ready, be more godly. I even had to make God happen. Being still and breathing is a lesson to learn in this season. Treat this day, this season, like a person. Say: here I am. I give myself to you. I don’t know what you have for me this year, but here I am, and what I have for you is all of me.
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