Lenten Angst

“I am rooted but I flow.” ~ Virginia Woolf

(Here are some thoughts/questions this Lenten season as I try to come to grips over the next 3 weeks with my reactions and how they have changed.)

Why do I react so differently to the liturgy for high holy days than I do on ‘normal’ Sundays?

Things don’t have to be literally true to be true on normal Sundays… and more importantly I am able to give myself that latitude. I know [intellectually] that the same thing applies on high holy days. But it still bothers me! And that is the cause of my angst.

Do I perhaps deep down still want those special days to be truly special in the same way they were in my childhood or the first time I experienced them? Am I afraid of the loss if I am no longer able to see them in the same way? Is the whole package of liturgy, hymns, readings, and my expectations and memories around these events just too much for me to handle? Am I grieving the loss of my religious innocence? [Sounds trite but surely that must be part of attaining any kind of religious maturity.] Is it just another step along the way?

It seems to be part of the human condition to want things to be wrapped up in neat little packages. We says things like “One can never go back. “ or ‘One can’t unring the bell.’. Yet we constantly look back what we had in the past and lament that it is no longer so. We really do want, when it comes right down to it, to have our bread buttered on both sides…to have it all! Or to put it another way, “To have the best of both worlds”. Interestingly, this last expression became widely used in the last half of the 20th century which makes me wonder if this feeling of entitlement, that we deserve to have everything, is not due in part to the prevalence that same feeling in our society. Only in this case it is being applied to religion. We should have it all. We deserve it. There must be something wrong with US, if we don’t. But maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t work the way!

I guess for the moment I will just have to accept that the organized church today hasn’t a comfortable place for me on high holy days like Palm Sunday, and that is too bad, because it could.

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