Lent and Longing
Desert, Igor Ulanovsky
The season of Lent can be a particularly trying time for those of us who are experiencing great sorrow.
It can also be a trying time for those of us who are looking inward – and outward – to contemplate what sacrifices, what alms, what prayers we might make, give, offer up, to relieve the injustices and exclusions of the world, including those within our own church.
We need some gravity like this in our lives, I suppose. But we also need a vision to sustain us. We need, always before us, the glow of all the Easters on the far horizon to show us where we are going and why we are taking such a profound journey.
I have a book of poems I love called “Blessing the Bread”. They are meditations by Lynn Ungar, a Unitarian Universalist minister. Here is just one which sustains me, and, I hope, you, too.
LENT
What will you give up for this season,
to help life along
in its curious reversals?
As if we had a choice.
As if the world were not
constantly shedding us
like feathers off a duck’s back-
the ground is always
littered with our longings.
You can’t help but wonder
about all the heroes,
the lives and limbs sacrificed
in their compulsion toward the good.
All those who dropped themselves
upon the earth’s hard surface-
weren’t they caught in pure astonishment
in the breath before they shattered?
Forget sacrifice. Nothing
is tied so firmly that the wind
won’t tear it from us at last.
The question is how to remain faithful
to all the impossible,
necessary resurrections.
One Response
There is a saying, “blessed are those for whom the church becomes a cross.” Those of us who long for the church to overcome patriarchal gender ideology may feel that our patriarchal church is a cross, to the point that going to Mass is a real purgatory. Oh well, the only remedy is to keep our eyes fixed on Christ during his passion, and also remember his mother standing at the foot of the cross. All paths to the resurrection pass through Calvary. Hang in there!
This caught my eye yesterday:
https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/broader-representation-women-church-process-cardinal-says
Is the good cardinal admitting that the issue is cultural rather than dogmatic?
Prayers