In the Thick of Lent

It's funny to me that spring is at once bursting with promise and notoriously lean. The bursting-with-promise part is easy to imagine as spring bulbs begin to pop up everywhere. However, the notoriously lean part only occurred to me after reading (or re-reading) one of my favorite non-fiction books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. The second-to-last chapter in Kingsolver's book about eating locally with her family for a year is entitled "Hungry Month: February-March." She writes:

"January is widely held to be the bugbear of local food, but the hungriest month is March, if you plan to see this thing through. Your stores are dwindling, your potatoes are sending pale feelers out into the void, but for most of us there is nothing new under the sun of muddy March, however it might intend to go out like a lamb. A few spring wildflowers, maybe, but no real eats. Our family was getting down to the bottom of our barrel" (322).

She goes on to extol the wonders of the chest freezer, but I won't go into that here. :)

When I take my almost daily walks up to Whitworth's campus, it doesn't look like spring will ever come. The grass is dank and yellowed and it's hard to imagine it will ever be lush and green or that the trees will ever have blossoms and leaves. If you really do live off the land and what you have to eat is all in your freezer and root cellar, you have to be creative with what you have left. The root veggies of winter are wrinkled and woody and the asparagus, lettuce, and spinach of spring are only just beginning. It's an awkward, in-between time.

I'm definitely in the thick of my Lenten discipline. We're already four weeks from Ash Wednesday, but we're still two-and-a-half weeks from Easter. For one deprived of sugar on a daily basis, Easter seems especially distant. (As I write, my housemate is making double chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen. Really? Is this fair?!) If I'm honest with myself, I am longing for Easter, but I also like that Easter feels distant and that my deprivation weighs on me and temptation surrounds me. These are the necessary and even, dare I say, good rigors of Lent. I love that the Church Year acknowledges the times in the course of a normal human life that are in limbo. It's not winter and not yet spring. It's not Christmas and not yet Easter. Primroses on racks outside Fred Meyer and royal purple crocuses are the only harbingers of spring.

That makes me wonder about the harbingers of Easter. When we look to Jesus' life and ministry, I would say baptism, temptation, cross, and grave. The road ahead of us to Easter is Lenten and is so very like this time between winter and spring. Where there is life after Easter and spring, we see only death during Lent. Yellowed grass and gnarled trees. Temptation and deprivation. Sin and selfishness.

But the great news about Easter is that it radically changes everything, and it's not just the appearance of things that change. It's not just that the grass becomes green and lush and the trees bud and the flowers bloom. It's not just that I can once again eat cookies and ice cream. It's that our very nature changes.

"We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ...for when we died with Christ [in baptism] we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him" (Romans 6:6-8).

Temptation gives way to victory. Darkness becomes light. Death leads to life. And, best of all, the crucified Christ becomes the Risen Christ.

Did you know you can celebrate Mardi Gras with a Pancake Feast?

I wanted to take the opportunity to think about Lent here. I wrote an article on my work’s blog entitled Why Lenten Discipline is a Good Thing, and it got me thinking about Lent.

I really had to live up Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) this year because I’m giving up sugar for Lent. I went to a church dessert potluck on Sunday night and came home with the leftovers of four people’s desserts! I took them all to work today and wished people a Happy Fat Tuesday. Farewell apple pie, chocolate cake, chocolate, and cookies (all of which I had today). We’ll not meet for 40 days. (The exception is, admittedly, the re-opening of Didiers on Feb. 28. If you have doubts about my choice to break my Lenten fast on this particular day, we can talk.)

As I was doing my research for my work blog article, I came across a BBC web page about English Lenten traditions that I’d never heard of before. Apparently, the English call Mardi Gras Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. Shrive (shrove) is the process of showing penitence for one’s sins, particularly before the start of the Lenten season. Pancake Day came about because some churches would encourage their parishioners to give up fatty ingredients for Lent. To use up the butter, eggs, and milk in church-goers’ pantries, they would make huge batches of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday before the start of Lent, a version of a Mardi Gras celebration.

Believe it or not, the English even inaugurated a Pancake Race in the late 1400s that is still a tradition today. (If you don’t believe me, check out River Cottage Family Cookbook from your local library.) Tradition goes that in 1445, a woman lost track of time while cooking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. She was taken by surprise when the church bells chimed to announce confession time, so she raced to the church with the skillet in her hand and apron around her middle. Pancake races in England were (and maybe still are) often followed by a church service. How crazy is that?! I knew I loved the English.

Enough history. Now to the practicalities of Lent. I was researching Spokane-area churches at work today and came across an awesome Lenten schedule that one church is offering its congregants. Take a look at it. I’m not going to do everything on the calendar, but I will certainly enjoy doing some of it. Even if you don’t choose to participate in any of it, I found the suggestions telling of what many in today’s churches feel is lacking in their own lives: silence, intentionality in relationships, rhythm. I have been lacking these qualities in my own life recently, so I look forward to following many of the suggestions.

As great as all the things on that calendar are, I’m hoping Lent will also be an intentional time of spending time with God in prayer, Bible study, service, and just plain ol’ silence. It’s hard to take time to slow down, but I want to slow down during Lent. And I’m hoping that abstinence from sugar will expose the human weakness in me so that I cling all the more to Christ and his sufficiency. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

I’d love to hear your thoughts about Lent in general or your own plan for Lenten discipline. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Blessings to each of you this week!