Lent 2012: What is this Lenten Journey?: Why Observe Lent?

I drive through the Mojave desert most every morning.  The landscape is stark, gritty, expansive.  A visual survey of the miles of flat land rolling up into harsh mountain outcroppings around its far flung waistline reveals wiry dry tumbleweeds...and Joshua trees.  Hearty, weather worn rabbits, acquainted with scarcity, scantily dot the terrain.
They have adapted; they can survive here.

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There isn't much water in the desert.  This is "high desert", above 2500 ft. elevation.  Bitterly cold nights can follow scorching hot days.  This place is a harsh taskmaster.  It is an environment much different from my mountain home.  Yet, I descend to traverse it almost daily, because I must, to get where I am going.

It is peaceful here.  A commute far different from the traffic, taillights, and graffiti splashed concrete of Los Angeles to the south.  

The desert is kind, if one is properly girded for it...fed, hydrated, supplied, and shielded from the sun and harshness...one can ponder, and examine ones conscience, needs, concerns, in the desert's ambivalent embrace.  The wind whispers in the background.  Sometimes, it howls.

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The desert is good for thinking.

Jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the desert....to be tried, and found good.  To contemplate and prepare for what was to come.  To demonstrate that man can survive, when fed with true nourishment from above.  To teach us to meet all challenges with the word of God. ...To point us to Living Water.

Lent is our journey in the desert.  Each year, the church bids us meet him there, to prepare ourselves for what is to come.

Soon, in our liturgical drama, our Lord will be betrayed; he will come before Pilot; he will make the ultimate sacrifice....and, while we watch, we will have to decide.  Do we know him?  Do we claim him as our own?  Do we stand by him as the cock crows?  Do we weep at the foot of the cross, and risk being revealed?  Will we believe, with a life changing belief, when the tomb stands empty?

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These are no small decisions.  It seems like the answers to these questions will be easy, doesn't it? 

"....Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you".~Matt. 26:35

But when we are really faced with them...the questions...stark, cold, and real, with heart pounding scared, and the air hard to draw into lungs taut and confronted....we feel how real the questions are.

Lent is to answer questions.

It is for finding out what we really need...to live.  And, for finding out what it is worth to us.

Join me in the desert, will you?

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We have much to contemplate.

We have self-examination to face.

Priorities to set.

Crutches, and barriers, to shed.

We need to feel what it is like to be hungry, in our bodies...in our souls....

...So we can recognize true nourishment, when we find it.

There are those poor in body,..in spirit, to feed.

There are the unborn ones to hold vigil for.

Our Lord waits for us in the desert.

That's what Lent is for.

There is much to do, to feel, to think about.  There is much to face, alone...laid bare...exposed....before we can experience...really experience...the resurrection.

Do you hear his call?

The days are growing longer friends.  (That's what it means you know...Lent, in Middle English: lencten, lengten, .... literally, lengthening of the daylight hours...Lent, Spring). The resurrection draws near...glorious newness of life...the True Light.

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But first, we must die...to sin, to cruelty, to emptiness, to gluttony of body and spirit, to lust.

Lent is for the dying that needs be done.  It is for the recognition that we need the free gift...that we cannot do it ourselves.  That, in him, through him, and by his free gift of grace, we might live.

Let us walk on fearless and determined,...shall we?

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~~~~~

We are currently in the fifth week after the Epiphany.  We are still reeling from the magnanimity of the gift in the manger...from the realization that the gift is for all people.  We are watching as he begins his earthly ministry, as he calls disciples, as he ministers.  But soon, soon, things will get rather serious.  We sense it on the wind. 

Mardi Gras, (Feb. 21 this year), ends the season after the Epiphany.  The next day, Ash Wednesday (Feb. 22, this year) begins our Lenten journey.  Be alert, friends....there is change on the winds.

Pax Christi,

Keep Walking,

~Michelle

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