Lent / Beginning
by Josh VonGunten
We begin Lent by contemplating our mortality. We remember that we are dust and that it is to dust that we shall one day return (Gen 3:19).
Naturally, this can be a very difficult truth to sit with. Our culture, for the most part, is deeply committed to helping us avoid the reality of death. Not only is this avoidance in the air, its inside of us too. It’s uncomfortable to face our mortality.
Yet, in facing reality, in struggling to somehow embrace it, rather than avoid it, we avail ourselves to wisdom. There’s a timeless pattern at work here. In what can feel counter intuitive, it is through getting low, owning our weakness and frailty, that we come to receive grace (the amazing realization that we are already loved and held by God right where we are) and are lifted up. And, it is in receiving grace that we become people of love. Put bluntly, the mystery is this: by facing death, we receive life. While this pattern is simple, it isn’t easy. Translating our experiences into wisdom takes time and a willingness to welcome harrowing questions and vulnerability.
Below is a poem, a prayer, a practice, and some supporting notes. The content below will probably be most helpful if you sit with it and take it in reflectively over several passes.
Poem:
Rend your Heart
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you
to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
—Jan Richardson
Practice:
Spend some time looking at a picture of yourself as a kid at a time when you were visibly much younger. What do you see? Can you get in touch with the you that inhabited your much younger looking body?
Next spend some time looking at a picture of a very old person (it could be of a grandparent or something you found online).
As you behold both images and take some time to sit in silence, begin to wonder what connections could be made. Ask the Spirit to speak to you as you sit with these images and make notes of what questions or awareness you want to hold onto.
Prayer
Examine me O God and know my heart, test me and discover my thoughts, and lead me in the way everlasting (Psalm 139:23-34). Help me to own my frailty and weakness. May today’s awareness be the beginning of wisdom and growth to come. Today, I acknowledge my humanity and remember that I am dust. Jesus, by your example of fasting and time in solitude, teach me to step away from distractions and noise in order to listen for the voice of God. Spirit, help me to see what I might let go of in order to create space for something new.
Notes:
"for dust you are and to dust you shall return" Genesis 3:19
Teach us the number of our days that we might enter the heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Cor. 4:7
If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: That in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love. – Julian of Norwich.
He who fears death is a slave and subjects himself to everything in order to avoid dying. But he who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil and when the devil finds such a soul, he can accomplish in it none of his works. – John Chrysostom
