'40 days . . . . .?'

Is Lent really for only 40 days?

For many of you out there, it is now the season of Lent: that period of 40 weekdays between Ash Wednesday and Easter. Incidentally, for those of you who might be thinking this winter will never end, the word Lent comes from the Middle English word, ’lente’, meaning springtime.

One of the meanings of Lent from an online dictionary is ‘a period of 40 days before Easter during which many Christians do not eat certain foods or do certain pleasurable activities as a way of remembering the suffering of Jesus Christ’. (It could be argued that there are more important things to remember and emulate about Jesus Christ than his suffering … things like his compassion, his call to non-violent resistance, his call to universal love.)

This is now often replaced with the concept of adding something for that period, often a spiritual practice that has been missing, to our lifestyle. In the hope, I presume, that it will continue after Easter as a habit. And so for many of us, the yearly chore of deciding just what to ‘give up’ or to ‘add on’ to our lives, has happened once again.

However, this year, the call of Lent has changed once more time for me. I have lived through many seasons of Advent calling for something to be born within, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus over 2000 year ago, as well as many years of Lent calling for something to die or for a sacrifice to be made, in response to the suffering and death of Jesus all those many eons ago. Both of these times of the Christian calendar also came with the resulting pressure or expectation to achieve this birth or this death yearly, on cue.

I had fallen into the trap of literal-ism!!!!

The cycle of the Christian calendar contains all the various components of living a spiritually mature life, including the ‘births’ and ‘deaths’ of beliefs, concepts and understandings which happens to each of us as we grow spiritually. For me, this Lent, it is more important to recognize where and why these deaths have happened in my journey, than that they happened during a specific time period. To realize that they are an integral part of growth without which the birth of something new would not happen. To realize that I might not recognize the event until long after it actually happened, years in fact. To realize that I need to take the time to look at and remember these ‘deaths’ and what grew out of them.

So, for me this year, Lent is a time of reflection, ‘lest I forget’ the deaths in my spiritual life that provide the impetus for my daily journey. What is it for you?

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