Lent 2017, Day 1 - What is Lent again?

Well that was quick.  I didn’t even get through one day.  What the hell is Lent about again?

A few days ago, I read a post over at Internet Monk – Another Look: Lent is not about getting better.

The 1^st 2 sentences:

"Lent is not about getting better.Lent is about preparing to die."

Boom.

The post proceeds to question the narrative of Lent as primarily a 40 day exercise in spiritual recommitment.

"Dubbed “adventures,” “training,” “journeys,” “discipline” or “formation,” the focus was more on getting better, stronger, more mature, more capable.  Casting off death so as to become more alive.  Stripping off the sin that so easily besets us and running a good race to the finish.

I don’t know."

Me neither.  I really don’t.  These dubbings are fine as far as things go, but Lent has to be about something other than 40 days of trying extra hard, right?  What possible purpose could a mark of ashes serve in that narrative?  None as far as I can tell – any connection is superficial.  No, effort and intentionality are not the enemy.  But our trying, our plans, our good intentions, our self-improvement projects – none of it alters the fact that the bodies through which we perceive existence are going to die. 

Ash to ash.  Dust to dust. 

And if Lent is about that instead, well, then maybe our attempts at devotion (noble as they may be) are out of step with Lent’s meaning.  Maybe they’re even counterproductive when it comes to the particularity of Lent because Lent is about something else.  I know that a well-intentioned giving-something-up-for-Lent has a liturgical history, but can it actually get in the way of that “something else”?

Enter the Walter Bruggemann Lent devotional that I’m reading this year – A Way Other Than Our Own.

Right away, a different vision and Lenten purpose is presented:

“But this is a God to whom a turn must be made, a God of demand, a God of demand ready to be a God of grace…not just hard demand, not just easy grace, but grace and demand, the way all serious relationships work.” 

“The imperative is around four verbs, “seek, call, forsake, return,” good Lenten verbs.” 

“Lent is a time to consider again our easy, conventional compromises and see again about discipline, obedience, and glad identity.”

Sigh.  I can't help but hold these two hermeneutics in tension.

In past years, I might’ve brushed off the Internet Monk approach as morbid and pointless in favor of Brueggemann’s approach.  This time around it’s pretty much the opposite. 

Are these two approaches at odds with one another? 

What the hell is Lent about? 

Is this not knowing part of it?

I can’t say why, but as I pondered this a post from a few years back by the always perceptive Richard Beck came to mind – Love is the Allocation of Our Dying.  The post had nothing to do with Lent.  Not directly anyways.  It was posted in mid-September.

“Life is a finite resource always slipping away.  Every minute that passes is a passing of life, a movement toward death.  Every moment we are being expended and used up.”

“Because to love other people in small but tangible ways over a lifetime is a way of dying.”

Maybe this is how these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints can be held together, even if only loosely.  It seems misguided to suggest that Lent is intended as a season where we simply sit around and think about death (although such sober meditation is far from unnecessary).  No, there is the matter of being.  Of existence.  What shall we do?

After the hope of advent and the vision of epiphany (and maybe Lent isn’t supposed to make sense except that it proceeds from these?) we resolve to love as the allocation of our dying.  It is the form that our dying takes, and the form that reveals just how much we don't want to die.  This is hard.  Sometimes it is pleasant and sometimes it is not.  We will fail.  We will both lack the imagination to envision what such an allocation looks like and will fail to do what we can imagine.  Even our successes are usually riddled with the anxiety of death or ego.  

Our own successes cannot save the world.  Or ourselves.  

We face this.  We allow ourselves to dwell in that for a moment.

I don’t know.  Just thinking out loud.

“The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil”, Memorials, and the Eucharist (2) - Memorials of Shame

The 1^st post in this series recounted and reflected on the story of the Inner and Outer Hornerites of George Saunders’ satirical novella, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.  I concluded the post in the same way that the book itself concludes; by pondering both the purpose of the statue of Phil and it’s disappearance from the collective conscience of New Horner.

Now, I don’t want to overanalyze the story as written or to read into it things that are not really there, but I think the following question is worth asking.  Why did the Creator – whose literal hands came down out of the heavens to “redeem” the Inner and Outer Hornerites from the mess of their division - leave the citizens with a statue of PHIL. MONSTER??  It certainly isn’t an arbitrarily chosen narrative device.

I'd like to reflect on this by way of a bold and courageous blog post by Richard Beck entitled America's Holocaust over at his blog, Experimental Theology.  I highly recommend giving it a slow, meditative read.

It's a post about national shame.  More specifically, it's about the ways that countries deal or don’t deal with the shameful parts of their history.

Beck talks about a recent trip to Germany and how "a national reckoning with the Holocaust had been and is being attempted."  He points to the memorial to Holocaust victims that's situated right smack in the middle of Berlin, the Topography of Terror Museum, and guided tours through the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

Why not tear that Concentration Camp down?  Why does it still stand?  Why is it illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany?  Unlike the Confederate Flag, why is consideration of the Nazi flag as a "cultural artifact" an impossibility?

What sort of things had to happen in the world at large and, perhaps more importantly, in the minds and hearts of the German people themselves in order to take the steps to memorialize their shame?

Nearly all of the time, Beck observes, our memorials are about pride.  They celebrate our successes, generosity, exceptionalism, and sacrifice but never our failures, theft, or those who we've sacrificed on the alters of “progress”.

It's interesting, he points out, that the United States has memorials to the Holocaust in nearly every major US city - memorials to the crimes committed by another country and to which the United States played a role in stopping - but not to any of our own Holocausts.

"What American Holocausts?!" you say.  

Where is the memorial to Transatlantic Slave Trade?  Where is the memorial to the lives lost in the Middle Passage?  How many within our borders even know what either of these are?  We memorialize their bravery and courage via our sports mascots, but where is the memorial to Native American genocide?

Our memorials to the slave trade and to the middle passage best take form in Black History Month or the Martin Luther King Jr memorial.  That is, we've managed to turn these things into symbols of national pride and progress.  They console us.

But we don't like memorials to our shame.  Those sorts of memorials "give us the creeps".

We need to hear this, even if it's uncomfortable.  Maybe it's worth hearing precisely because it’s uncomfortable.

To bring it back to our story, perhaps the very thing that could keep New Horner from once again becoming Inner and Outer Horner (or some mutation of it) is the statue of PHIL.  MONSTER.  In it, the New Hornerites might remember what had happened, what they were capable of, and what they might be capable of again.

And as Phil's story goes, this was all divinely blessed.  Phil invoked the will of this divine being confidently and liberally throughout his rise to power.  Invoking the approval of the divine certainly tickled the ears of his audience, but Phil had this god all wrong.  So just as importantly, the statue might serve as a reminder of the One who put it there – “creepy” as the statue may be.  It might provide a reminder of the One who broke down the boundaries of string that divided Inner and Outer Hornerites, made one man out of the two, and told them that they are enough.  It might remind them of their story, their telos.  

Here’s the thing.  The New Hornerites have the statue, but their memories were wiped clean and they don't know actually why they have it.  They'd need it to be told to them by their "invading" neighbors.  You'd think they'd want to know.  But do they?

In the next post, I'd like to look at some of these themes as they relate to the Eucharist.

continued

Random Thoughts: The Week of 3/25/16 to 4/1/16

**********

In his Meditation from Friday, 3/25/16 entitled "The View From The Bottom", Fr. Rohr writes:

"Only by solidarity with other people's suffering can comfortable people be converted.  Otherwise we are disconnected from the cross - of the world, of others, of Jesus, and finally of our own necessary participation in the great mystery of dying and rising."

A few thoughts:

1. The word "solidarity" is a carefully chosen word.  It is not "caring" about other's people's suffering (as in feeling a twinge of emotion or guilt when watching the news or a movie) though this is not a bad thing in and of itself.
2. It is not simply a long distance financial commitment to the suffering of others (though this is far, far, far from a bad thing).
3. It is solidarity with other people's suffering.
4. Solidarity implies that you also will suffer.  You too are affected.
5. Change that word "you".  I will suffer.  I am affected.
6. Solidarity leads to suffering.
7. But I don't want to suffer.  And it seems like the entirety of my life is set up to avoid it.  The "panem et circenses", the "bread and circuses", seeks to define my life.
8. Solidarity can only happen in love.  And love can only happen in solidarity with others.
9. Love leads to suffering.  The Way of the Cross.
10. Love, the manifestation of which is solidarity, also leads to conversion.
11. This "conversion" itself is a "participation in the great mystery of dying and rising."
12. Conversion  = participation.
13. Now what???

**********

Paul Ryan in a recent speech:

"There was a time when I would talk about a difference between "makers" and "takers" in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. "Takers" wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don't want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.

So I stopped thinking about it that way—and talking about it that way. But I didn’t come out and say all this to be politically correct. I was just wrong. And of course, there are still going to be times when I say things I wish I hadn’t. There are still going to be times when I follow the wrong impulse."

It's impossible to pretend that the rhetoric that Ryan seeks to eliminate isn't prevalent.

Check this out - Who Said It: Fox News or Jesus?

Biased?  Perhaps.  But the question is not whether there is "bias" in the presentation, but whether the source material itself is real and being used in reference to broad groups of people (as opposed to addressing specific cases of abuse).  It represents a fundamental way of seeing the world, one in which all people get and are getting what they deserve.  Poor?  It's your fault.  The opportunities are there and are available to all without exception.  Government should get.  Out.  Of.  The.  Way.  I'm successful?  Wealthy?  I have earned it.  Me.  The system works!!

This is not true for me.  I have two wonderful parents who stayed married.  My health and basic needs were provided for.  I lived in safe neighborhoods growing up.  I went to safe schools where I could learn effectively.  I wasn't ANY more motivated than any other teenager, but my own lack of motivation was effectively covered up by extensive opportunity.  I was able to get into a good college.  My parents paid for it, and I graduated virtually debt free.    This lack of debt opened up opportunities - to travel a little bit, to buy a house, to save money, etc.  Would I have started dating my wife if I'd been living at home with my parents?  Through all of this, I made TONS of mistakes that I got away with where others haven't.  I have done things that could have ruined my life.

This is not to say that life is just pure randomness with no cause and effect.  It's just to say that where you start goes a long way in determining where you end up.

I'll be curious to see how this plays out within the political world.  Is this posturing, rhetoric and political gamesmanship, or something more?

**********

A walk from Thursday to Sunday of Holy Week with two of my favorite bloggers, Richard Beck and Brian Zahnd:

Thursday: To Hell With Symbolic (Richard Beck)

Friday: Good Friday: A World Indicted (Brian Zahnd)

Saturday: Awake, O Sleeper, And Rise From The Dead (Richard Beck)

Sunday: The Gardener (Brian Zahnd)

**********

Much of what marinates in my mind over the course of a week originates either directly or tangentially in the things I’ve read during the week, some of which is new, some was published earlier but is new to me, and some I’m returning to after having read it some time ago.  Among the dozens of excellent blog posts and articles that I read each week, here are a few that I found to be particularly profound, inspiring, challenging, enlightening, informative, memorable, or provocative for me personally.  I might even reference something with which I profoundly DISAGREE (which I’ll identify accordingly - there won’t be a need to guess!)

Owning Up to Torture (New York Times) – Eric Fair

The growing controversy over Georgia’s Indiana-style religious freedom bill, explained (Vox) – German Lopez

The Self and the Gospel (Eclectic Orthodoxy) – Brian Moore

Traditio Deformis (First Things) – David Bentley Hart

It’s Always Better to be More Gracious than God (Speaking Freely) – Matthew Frost

How the Soul Matures – Fr. Ron Rolhesier

**********

And lastly, a few quotes that I came across this past week:

"Life is lived forward, but is only understood backwards."
--Kierkegaard (as quoted in Walking With Grandfather by Michael Hardin)

"If the skill could not be practiced by anyone, anywhere, then it was useless."
--(Walking With Grandfather by Michael Hardin, p70)