Preparing for a season of repentence and meditation is daunting. I always feel inadequate to the task of LENT, the all-caps (in my mind!), Orthodox practice of fasting, prayer, penitent hearts and service. The season leading to Easter, the true Celebration of the Christian faith, is a time of year that I realize what a hopeless mess I am. How desperately I cling to the Cross of Christ, and what a disaster I make of things when I try to make my own way. You'd think Lent, taken with this large dose of castor oil as it seems to be, would be depressing and to be avoided, but I always receive such a blessing from the lessons Christ teaches me in the season.
A few years ago the girls and I walked a section of the Appalachian Trail. Thirty miles in five days, with three nights on the trail. I remember thinking, "Why, that's not so bad. We'll walk 8-9 miles the first day when we are rested and strong, and then it's just about six miles per day. Easy, peesy." And then we actually did it. And it was HARD. Harder than childbirth. Harder than anything, in fact, that I'd ever done in my life. Less than two miles in, I figured out that I'd overpacked my backpack. Shortly thereafter, I realized I was not wearing adequate footwear. And long before that first night, I was praying I'd just survive. As I stumbled out of the woods that final day, exhausted, pale, spent...I said that I'd NEVER do such a thing again. But I wouldn't trade anything for the experience, and I am actually planning to go again this year.
LENT isn't that hard physically, but when I approach it correctly, and navigate it fully, I can end feeling just as spent, and just as rewarded spiritually. The LORD shows me beautiful vistas, glimpses of His plan for my life, and humbles me, and fills me. I greet the Risen Savior at the Cross, and my Hallelujahs are more real, not the echos we hear in this shadowland.
And so, I begin my Lenten Journey 2009 with both some things I will give up, and some things I will add to my pack for the trip.
I plan to:
(1) Fast on Wednesdays throughout the season (from February 25-April 8).
(2) Add readings from the Daily Office Lectionary to my daily Bible reading.
(3) Add traditional prayers, practices and meditations to my daily routine.
(4) Abstain from all beverages other than water, to draw my mind away from things of this world to the characteristics of God's nature and His purpose for my life.
(5) Declutter my possessions, and focus on what is really important and valued in my life.
"The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of GOD, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of GOD. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." --John 1: 9-14
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