a monk living in the world

Posted by zenpilgrim at 9:05 PM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: Ash Wednesday, Lent

Adapted from my meditation for the Ash Wednesday services:

Ash Wednesday isn't exactly one of the days in the church calendar that causes one to feel all bright and bubbly. It marks the beginning of Lent. Lent began as a time of prayer, fasting and preparation for baptism by converts and later became a time of penance for all Christians. In traditional worship, it's a time where we are called to confront our mortality and our sinfulness, a time to truly accept our human fate and repent. Now all of this is pretty heady stuff. And it makes us uncomfortable. As I prepared for today, I made list of some words that I associate with Lent, words that often make me feel uneasy. I shared these words with some friends at a dinner meeting and while each word brought a different response from each person, they all agreed that three of the words tended to make us tense up a little as we sat and talked.

The three words are prayer, remember and repentance. On the surface, one might not think these words would have any real emotional impact on someone but lets take a look at them.

Prayer, that time when we come to God, to talk with God, to listen to God, the time when we want just to be with God. Why would that make us uneasy? Could it be because our prayers tend to be more like a shopping list or a "Honey Do" list for God? I have a theory as to why we fall into the trap of turning prayers into demands and requests of God. As we grow and become adults, there is a growing disparity between the person we tell the world we are and the person we really are. And this disparity results in feelings of shame, anger, self-hate. And when we come to God in prayer, if we let our guards down even for a second, we will come face to face with the real person. So our prayers become these one-way conversations so we can try and shield ourselves from the reality of who and what we are (the good and the bad). Because if you truly come to God, really come to know God, you will also come to know the real you, not the you that wears the mask for the world to see.

Prayer causes us to remember, to remember things we would prefer to forget. Things we said to hurt someone and things said that hurt us. God doesn't do this just to make relive the hurt or the anger. In prayer, with God with us, we can face up to what we did and ask for forgiveness. And we can embrace the pain we feel from what was done to us and then give it to God, letting ourselves forgive those who hurt us.

Prayer leads to remembering, and remembering allows us to move towards repentance.

Repentance is a word that our society really hates and I think also misunderstands. We often try to get off by saying "I'm sorry" with no real attempt to make things right trying to change how we act and respond to others. Or we try to downplay repentance by saying we try to change but it's too difficult. Or we ask God for help and when we don't change overnight, we just continue on in the same old way.

We need to remember that repentance is a process, like cleaning a house. It takes time and requires ongoing work to keep it clean. Repentance isn't like turning a light switch on and off, it takes time.

As we start this season of Lent, approach God in prayer, be with God, lets learn to face ourselves, to remember and to continue the process of repentance.

Posted by zenpilgrim at 2:33 PM | 0 comments Links to this post    
Labels: Ash Wednesday, Lent