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Ash
Wednesday: Spring Cleaning for the Soul
by Keri Wyatt Kent
Patches of
grimy snow are still scattered on my lawn. Winter is not
over, but I’m stirred within somehow. I want to do a
little spring cleaning. Not in my house. Anyone who
knows me knows that I’m rarely motivated in that way.
No, I want to spring clean my soul. I’m not sure, but I
think Lent might provide that opportunity.
The Lenten season arrives, for most evangelicals, as a
barely acknowledged blip on the radar screen. Easter is
a big deal. Holy Week, the week before Easter, is
important. But the seven weeks preceding it are not that
different from any other weeks.
I go to a church so large that they have reserved
seating for each of the six Easter services. Thousands
attend to celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
But we barely give a nod to Ash Wednesday. While there
happens to be a service tonight, it’s only because the
regular midweek worship service is always on Wednesday.
We don’t do ashes.
To our credit, we make a pretty big deal of Good Friday,
at the end of Lent. We have a somber service focusing on
Christ’s death. We use Friday night and Saturday to
reflect and prepare our hearts for Easter.
The
Catholic and Anglican traditions try to give Lent its
due. Other denominations, especially Lutherans and
Presbyterians, also observe the Lenten season. For many
in these traditions, the 40 weekdays between Ash
Wednesday and Easter is a deeply meaningful time of
spiritual renewal.
In college, when I fancied myself a radical, I followed
all the other campus radicals at my conservative
evangelical college, and began attending an Episcopal
church.
That year, I experienced Lent for the first time. The
cross is draped in purple, and the liturgy is purposely
devoid of the word “Alleluia!” from Ash Wednesday until
Easter morning. On that day, the mourning drape is
removed from the cross, and the church is full of light
and flowers. Singing out “Christ has died, Christ has
risen, Christ will come again! Alleluia!” felt deeply
significant because we had fasted from those words for
so long.
Still, it
is easy to slip into legalistic interpretations of Lent.
I remember having dinner with a Catholic friend who
ordered lobster when we ate out on Friday during Lent,
explaining that she was “fasting” and therefore could
not have steak or even chicken. I’m not so sure the
lobster tail with butter helped her identify with the
sufferings of Christ, but she was dutifully following
the “fish on Friday” rule.
Obviously, such illogical legalism has obscured the
meaning and purpose of Lent. And the Bible never
mentions Lent as a commandment, although Jesus does talk
a lot about fasting. Come to think of it, when I was
growing up I don’t ever remember hearing a sermon on
fasting, either. It’s not surprising that evangelicals,
who emphasize grace and freedom in Christ, dropped the
self-denial practices somewhere along the way.
Still, I am drawn to the idea of Lent, if not
necessarily to its actual practice. If only it were,
say, a weekend, instead of 40 dreary winter days, it
might be more palatable. I can give up anything for a
weekend.
Traditionally, Lent is a time of penitence and fasting,
when Christ’s followers prepare for the celebration of
Easter. Through self-denial, we identify with the
sufferings of Christ, we remember his 40-day fast in the
wilderness. We repent. On paper, these sound good.
However, to actually engage in fasting, self-denial, or
suffering, that’s another story. It seems it would be
tedious at best, downright painful at worst.
So why bother? Lent is not really a celebration, but
rather a preparation. I want to establish a rhythm of
life, where times of penitence and self-examination ebb
and flow with times of celebration and worship. I want
the music of my life to have both point and
counterpoint.
If a piece of music has only loud, high notes, it is not
beautiful. What makes music beautiful is the
juxtaposition of high notes and low; of soft quiet notes
and strong, forte ones; of melody and harmony. To
appreciate one, you must have the other. Variations in
tone and volume and tempo make music that is beautiful
or interesting.
If we ignore Lent, we rob Easter of its texture, of its
real beauty. Its music becomes flat, when we take away
the counterpoint.
What would happen if I allowed myself the luxury of
beginning to prepare for Easter not two days before, but
forty days before? I’ve never thought of Lent as a
luxury, but in a spiritual sense, it is. What if I were
to focus on preparing my soul, to mourn Christ’s death
by dying to myself, if even only in small ways? Wouldn’t
the celebration of his resurrection become more
meaningful?
I’m not talking about fierce, legalistic approaches. But
what if I were to engage in fasting, not as a way to
lighten my body, but to lighten my soul?
In her book Soul Feast, Marjorie Thompson writes, “In
the early church, Lent was viewed as a spiritual spring,
a time of light and joy in the renewal of the soul’s
life.”
Sounds lovely. But how? Fasting is an intimidating
practice to many Christians, including me. Fasting
brings us face to face with our fears. At the root of
it, we are afraid that if we don’t continually consume,
if we don’t grab all we need and then some, we will
probably die.
Rather than giving up just one food for Lent, or all
food, what if I were to give up overstuffing myself:
stuffing my body with food, stuffing my closet with
clothes I don’t need, stuffing my schedule to the point
of being frantic?
Thompson tells about the spiritual father who, when
asked about fasting, said that he found it best to “eat
every day, but only a little, so as not to be
satisfied.”
Keeping our consumption to a level that does not quite
satisfy us can, if we let it, draw us to God. He offers
the satisfaction we seek.
Other writers suggest fasting from things other than
food: television, for example, or vices such as gossip
or boasting or screaming at our kids. Hmm. What might
that type of fasting do for my soul?
St. Augustine said that God is always trying to give
good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive
them.
Lent provides an opportunity to let go of the things my
hands are full of, to get rid of some of the clutter in
my soul. Let the spring cleaning begin.
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