Lent List

Stuff I would like to give up for Lent? Oh yes, I made a list. Space does not permit its inclusion here. Nor does tact. Some of it is pretty common. We have lost so much, some of us, people whom we do not see right now, people we will never see gain. Loss and gain. Anticipation and regret. Possibilities, memories. Waiting. Our current situation is unique. And we are not the first.  

A traveler waiting for a visa. A convalescent waiting for release. Parents hoping for a child, workers looking for a job, people on the move seeking a home. 

Situations that are common and simply our own. 

When I was young I saw a children’s book about Robert the Bruce, waiting in his stone room and watching a spider weave its web. It was slow work, but he had the time. Eventually as an adult I learned more about what he was waiting for as well as what he was going to do. He led a country to unity. And yet that was not the end of the story as he yearned for the Holy Land. As it was, he made it about halfway - to Spain. His heart sought Jerusalem but found its final rest at home. (His heart is buried at Melrose Abbey.)

We hear the Bible stories. A would-be mother waiting with her husband for a place to live, a child to love. A widow with no home to go to but one far away, and no family but one unknown. And a people that wants, that longs, to be free. As we do.

Lent is a season of anticipation. Of preparation. Again, so soon after the Christmas cycle has ended. Advent, Nativity, Epiphany, Presentation. Just weeks ago. And now another cycle, the Easter cycle, begins. But it begins in Ashes. 

Wouldn’t you think ashes are the end of a story, not the beginning? But so it is: forty days from Ash Wednesday, not counting Sundays, Christians arrive where other traditions already are: at Easter Sunday, another feast day of celebration, but not before plumbing the depths of Good Friday. A dreadful anticipation. So we remember our mortality - as if we could forget it! This year of all years. 

Remember that you are made of dust taken from the earth, and to the earth you shall return. And yet all along you are in the hands of God.

Always.

The Rev. Dr. John Leech is an Episcopal priest, a Benedictine oblate, and a friend of the Iona Community. He has served congregations in northern California and western Washington, and now in southern Arizona. 

https://tucson.com/you-are-safe-in-the-hands-of-god/article_2f8cbbff-973c-5bfb-aec7-a1c294536efa.html (Arizona Daily Star, February 21, 2021).

Joel 2:1-2,12-17

or Isaiah 58:1-12

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Psalm 103 or 103:8-14