Remember that you are dust...
Ashes smear my forehead, spread by a minister at the Cathedral a few blocks from my apartment in downtown Fresno. This morning was chilly and foggy, an appropriate winter chill cloaking our valley after an unseasonably warm few days. Yesterday I shared a beer at a favorite local spot and reminisced on the past few weeks and on the resolve that I bring into this new season. As I sipped the dregs of the delicious IPA and wondered how long the last taste would linger on my tongue, my thoughts turned to this turn of the calendar, to this next forty days, to fasting, prayer, and generosity.
Lent has begun.
Over the years the season has brought new meanings for me. For most, Lent means giving something up. There's an awful movie made about some dude giving up sex for an entire 40 days, and that's saying something about how relevant this observance is. Truth is, I was barely more reverent. I gave up meat during my freshman year in college, and that proved too difficult. I think I pared it down to two or three days. The next years I went further: I gave up listening to music in my car, iPod, and at home. What else could I do in the silence but pray? That year was closer to the true heart of this whole thing. We don't just fast. We pray. We add, we give. We draw closer to the God who calls us from death to life.
Two years ago Lent was my first full experience as a communicant in the Catholic church. I served the altar during a Stations of the Cross service, during which I locked my knees and nearly fainted, swooning to the floor with the thought that I needed to protect the crucifix with my life. I won't make the same mistake again. Here, two years later, I volunteer to sponsor somebody making an adult declaration of faith and joining the church officially, as I did. I'm abstaining from alcohol. I'm taking my prayers seriously. I'm giving financially to a variety of organizations, missions, and causes.
But you see, this Lent I'm convinced that I need to altogether focus on taking myself a little less seriously.
There's a portion of the Examen prayer, which I regularly employ as a part of my evening prayer regimen, that challenges me to identify my main fault, that habitual weakness that plagues the way that I view myself, others, and influences my relationship with God.
Without hesitation, I return to the dreaded "p" word, a vestige of my role as eldest child, being raised in an educated family, and various other steps along the journey. Perfectionism.
Jesus tells us to be perfect, but we all know that only He is perfect. The saints teach us with more wisdom. True perfection, says Teresa of Avila, is a journey through the soul in prayer. John Wesley eloquently describes it as a transaction of God's magnificent grace.
I recognize, and continue to see, that my faults are the double edges of my strengths. I am intelligent, so not knowing something is a challenge that I gladly accept. I've been exposed to a vast array of wonderful experiences, cultures, and tastes, so when something or somebody strikes me as unsophisticated, I recoil. I was successful in school, so successful in fact, that the first class I found myself failing at I immediately withdrew from and changed my major. My lowest grade in all of college was a dismal B-.
Yet I recognize that this has cost me. I cannot expect everyone to stand up the absurd standards I hold myself to. I have lost relationships and much more because of this. It is time to accept the wholeness, which in fact is much closer to the approach that Jesus brought when he walked among us.
It's time to ditch the ways I engineer perfection and embrace the humanity that I inhabit. Join me, won't you?
Peace to you this Lenten season.
For some great music to focus your devotion, I suggest The Brilliance and New York Hymns.
Lent has begun.
Over the years the season has brought new meanings for me. For most, Lent means giving something up. There's an awful movie made about some dude giving up sex for an entire 40 days, and that's saying something about how relevant this observance is. Truth is, I was barely more reverent. I gave up meat during my freshman year in college, and that proved too difficult. I think I pared it down to two or three days. The next years I went further: I gave up listening to music in my car, iPod, and at home. What else could I do in the silence but pray? That year was closer to the true heart of this whole thing. We don't just fast. We pray. We add, we give. We draw closer to the God who calls us from death to life.
Two years ago Lent was my first full experience as a communicant in the Catholic church. I served the altar during a Stations of the Cross service, during which I locked my knees and nearly fainted, swooning to the floor with the thought that I needed to protect the crucifix with my life. I won't make the same mistake again. Here, two years later, I volunteer to sponsor somebody making an adult declaration of faith and joining the church officially, as I did. I'm abstaining from alcohol. I'm taking my prayers seriously. I'm giving financially to a variety of organizations, missions, and causes.
But you see, this Lent I'm convinced that I need to altogether focus on taking myself a little less seriously.
There's a portion of the Examen prayer, which I regularly employ as a part of my evening prayer regimen, that challenges me to identify my main fault, that habitual weakness that plagues the way that I view myself, others, and influences my relationship with God.
Without hesitation, I return to the dreaded "p" word, a vestige of my role as eldest child, being raised in an educated family, and various other steps along the journey. Perfectionism.
Jesus tells us to be perfect, but we all know that only He is perfect. The saints teach us with more wisdom. True perfection, says Teresa of Avila, is a journey through the soul in prayer. John Wesley eloquently describes it as a transaction of God's magnificent grace.
I recognize, and continue to see, that my faults are the double edges of my strengths. I am intelligent, so not knowing something is a challenge that I gladly accept. I've been exposed to a vast array of wonderful experiences, cultures, and tastes, so when something or somebody strikes me as unsophisticated, I recoil. I was successful in school, so successful in fact, that the first class I found myself failing at I immediately withdrew from and changed my major. My lowest grade in all of college was a dismal B-.
Yet I recognize that this has cost me. I cannot expect everyone to stand up the absurd standards I hold myself to. I have lost relationships and much more because of this. It is time to accept the wholeness, which in fact is much closer to the approach that Jesus brought when he walked among us.
It's time to ditch the ways I engineer perfection and embrace the humanity that I inhabit. Join me, won't you?
Peace to you this Lenten season.
For some great music to focus your devotion, I suggest The Brilliance and New York Hymns.
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