2/21/07:
Ash Wednesday Reflection - by Jim Zellmer
I see a great similarity between the attitude Kathleen Norris describes people having towards the emptiness of the Plains land and the way we’ve tended to approach the season of Lent. “How could anyone choose it, let alone love it?” And just like the plains land of the West, the season of Lent can often seem vast & empty – it extends through two of the dreariest months of the year, it involves fasting, abstaining and giving up some favorite little indulgence; even our churches are sparsely decorated and we omit the Alleluia before the Gospel. As with most periods of preparation and waiting we tend to want to get through it as quickly as possible, in anticipation of our destination.
We are a culture that has been conditioned to view waiting in a negative light. The immediate gratification of one’s every desire has been transformed from being viewed as a sign of a lack of discipline or will power into a measure of how wealthy or successful one is. Why wait, if you can have it now? Don’t have the money? Charge it. Just turn on the TV and you’ll find advertisements for products promising shortcuts to almost any desire a person could have. Unfortunately, in taking this approach we’ve been too willing to sacrifice quality for expediency. In contrast, the season of Lent is counter-cultural in its call to slow down, simplify our lives and develop spiritual discipline. There is no quick-fix or shortcut to discipleship.
Another powerful image related to the season of Lent & which comes out in the novel “Dakota” is the transformative power of the desert experience.
It is a recurring theme in our Judeo-Christian tradition. The paradox of the desert is that it continually calls us out of the desert. It is a quiet seclusion but not isolation, an emptiness that is anything but empty. One of the more prominent desert experiences in the Bible is the 40 year desert sojourn of the Israelites after the Exodus from Egypt. While Canaan was their ultimate destination, it was within the crucible of the desert that they forged the bonds that would hold them together as a people in a new and foreign land. And it was in this desolate environment that God spoke to them through Moses at Sinai, calling the people to a Covenantal relationship of love. Even our modern, urban-centered lives can be compared to a desert wandering; we are a people on a journey. The film “Patch Adams” opens with the following quote: “All of life is a coming home …salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, bee keepers, sword-swallowers . . . all of us; all the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home.” - While it is a journey we must commit to individually, it is at the same time one we share and travel with every human being on the planet.
The prophet Elijah had his desert experience on a mountain top listening for the voice of God which came to him not in a thunderous noise but in the stillness of a gentle breeze. His experience serves as a reminder to a world awed by special effects and human endeavors on a grandiose scale that it is more often in the simplicity of our ordinary experience that we can best encounter the mystery and wonder of God’s presence in our lives.
In the Gospels we see that Jesus too had his own desert experiences. Prior to beginning his public ministry, he sought out the solitude of the desert – a time for reflection, prayer and preparation. And on the night before his death, it was in the seclusion of the garden at Gethsemane that he prayed for the strength to follow the Father’s will even at the ultimate price to himself. And his betrayal by a friend and follower is a desert experience that many of us can empathize with.
Some desert experiences can be pleasant. As someone who enjoys ice fishing, I find the peaceful frozen environment one that affords me the time to reflect, think and pray. However, it has been at some of the darkest, lowest, and loneliest times in my life that I’ve most experienced God’s unconditional love and concern. And, it is through these experiences that I’ve come to feel most connected to other human beings, most sensitive to the fact that each person carries their own burdens through life, and most aware that we are all on this journey together and strongest when we walk with others, helping to shoulder one another’s burdens. As Thomas Merton expressed, “It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.”
As with so many other aspects of our Faith, the season of Lent is filled with paradox. What seems emptiest and the least significant is often most full of God’s presence.
We tend to confuse the ideas of seclusion, quiet, stillness with the terms isolation, loneliness and nothingness, and so we avoid these things by filling our lives with noise and constant activity. (like Kathleen Norris says in her novel, our cities and shopping malls have become ways through which we attempt to deny our human limitations). We sometimes think that by surrounding ourselves with noise, activity and a multitude of people we will somehow automatically feel connected. Ironically, it is often when we make our worlds more crowded and cluttered that people end up feeling isolated and lost.
We can even do this in our prayer, uncomfortable with the silence of simply being with God, we barrage God with all kinds of talk and ritual. The problem is that this doesn’t leave us much time to listen to how God may be speaking in the stillness of our hearts. The season of Lent encourages us to unclutter our lives, stop focusing on the minuscia and recognize what is right in front of us but too often overlooked and obscured by other concerns. It is a time to reevaluate where we are on our journey of faith, identify where we want to be and recommit ourselves to living according to the Gospel.
