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Making space: A reflection on Lent, family and the resurrection

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This year, Ash Wednesday was spent in the hospital talking with doctors and undergoing tests. Neither my wife nor I were ill — we were trying to get pregnant.  And it just so happened that Ash Wednesday was the day when everything would begin.  Of course, the timing wasn’t ideal. I was part of a service with three other churches that evening, and I had more than enough work to fill a 12-hour-day (I always do in Lent).  It really wasn’tthe perfect time to spend most of the day with medical professionals.  But we made the time because we had to, because having a family was the most important thing to us. I thought it would get better after the first time-consuming day.  I thought that the rest of Lent would basically be a breeze (at least personal-life-wise), with perhaps only a couple of interruptions.  I was wrong.  For two women like us, the process of trying to get pregnant is very similar to that of couples who are having fertility challenges.  There are regular diagnostic … [Read more...]

Tagged With: family life • Lent

Polishing the silver

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It has become an annual lenten ritual, pulling out rags and the pink paste that smells of wintergreen to polish my baptismal bowl. It’s a sterling silver original (design from 1655) - made small for a child perfectly round and simple. A trinity of circles form a sturdy handle on one side for little hands to grab. M.A.A. is engraved there, echoes of an earlier identity, and on the bottom in a fine, worn script: March 26, 1950. There are dents and scratches on it now, the evidence of one toddler’s long-ago enthusiasms or carelessness. But its 12-month bronzed-over patina shines up nicely as I rub it to a clean clear silver brightness - the toll of a year’s journey made lovely in God’s sight, an acceptable offering of my gratitude for faults redeemed, fears relieved, graces given in this year past. When we’ve been there ten thousand years bright shining… Remember your baptism and be thankful. I do. And I am. Marney Ault Wasserman, now happily … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

Lent: Reckoning with wounds

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I went with a couple friends to see “A Wrinkle in Time,” directed by Ava DuVernay. My heart jumped when Mrs. Who, played by Mindy Kaling, quoted Rumi, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Just days before, my spiritual director had shared Rumi’s quote as a way to help me reflect on a deep hurt that has made it hard to pray. In thinking that my work as a “good Christian pastor” was to forgive, I had not brought the wound to Jesus. Instead, I obsessed over the bitterness and resentment arising from it… and felt frustrated every time those feelings surged within me. My spiritual director encouraged me to go deeper – to the wound itself – and to meet Jesus there. After all, Jesus also suffered deep, deep wounds. The resurrected Lord still carries his bodily wounds – the holes in his hands, his feet, his sides – the place where “sorrow and love flow mingled down” (thank you, Isaac Watts!). Rather than resent the wound, she encouraged me to think of my wound as a place of … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

Holy Solitude: Lenten Reflections with Saints, Hermits, Prophets, and Rebels

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Heidi Haverkamp WJK Press, 148 pages Heidi Haverkamp is an Episcopal priest who previously delighted readers with “Advent in Narnia: Reflections for the Season.” In “Holy Solitude,” she opens the door for a deeper practice of Lent that will strengthen disciples for the life of faithful living. Haverkamp is an oblate in the Benedictine tradition, and the influence is sensed here. Not only is she mindful of busy schedules and the necessity of disciplines laid out in a calendar, but also the value of exemplars to guide our practice. The book is an invitation to learn from those who have gone before us: saints, rebels, prophets and hermits. It’s an opportunity to follow a wise guide into a more holy life equipped and fortified by simple practices. Each day of Lent has a story, a Scripture and a suggested practice. The reader will encounter Saint Francis and Jeremiah, Julian of Norwich and Isaiah, Dorothy Day and Howard Thurman, whose lives inspire us in a more faithful way. Haverkamp … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

When you know your angels — A Lenten reflection

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Guest commentary by Jordan B. Davis This year, Lent has had a new and beautiful meaning in my life. For the first time since I was in college (8 years), I have a place to call “home” as I sit with God. I never considered the importance of having a constant faith family during the Lenten season until this year. In fact, last year I spent the season going to visit one congregation after another to observe the many ways that others were spending time with God during this holy and sacred time. The year before that, I hadn’t paid much attention to the season and instead focused my energy on my work with Union Presbyterian Seminary, sharing more about the work of the seminary than thinking about my relationship with God. As part of my role, I had already compiled a Lenten devotion; I was done with Lent. This year, however, I have a place to call “home” as I wander my wilderness. Not quite halfway through the season, I already appreciate the presence of the congregation far more than … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent

Music’s role in facilitating the paradox of Lent: An individual journey best achieved in community

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As we embark on our Lenten journeys each year, we often think of those journeys as personal and private. We enter into a somewhat solitary season of reflection, prayer, fasting, reading and meditation. Indeed, the liturgical season of Lent gives us opportunities for personal reflection like no other time in the church year. Perhaps we have been influenced in our quest for an individual journey by the African-American spiritual: Jesus walked this lonesome valley, He had to walk it by himself. Oh, nobody else could walk it for him, He had to walk it by himself. We must walk this lonesome valley, We have to walk it by ourselves. Oh, nobody else can walk it for us, We have to walk it by ourselves. You must go and stand your trial, You have to stand it by yourself. Oh, nobody else can stand it for you, You have to stand it by yourself. The hymns that we sing have the power to strike a chord deep within that often shape our theological and spiritual approach to being a … [Read more...]

Tagged With: Lent • music

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