Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is upon us... and since it's so late this year, I've had a long time to think about what I might doforLent as in "what are you doing for Lent?" When I was growing up we never talked about Lent, but our church now celebrates Ash Wednesday with a service... so now I think about what I might doforLent.

The big question is always why.

A couple years ago I began to ask myself this question and was inspired by a poem by Mary Oliver called "Gethsemane" from her book Thirst. And it reflects on the poor disciples, falling asleep in the garden when Jesus was agonizing over the death to come, and the stars and wind that kept watch with him that night. In the Bible Jesus says "watch with me" and this is what I want to doforLent. I want to keep my eyes open to Jesus in this world, not to fall into the bleary sleep of everyday life. It takes intention, and open heartedness, and more courage, I am sure, than I have.

So I do acts of discipline, like pinches and slaps, to keep my eyes open during the long night of Lent. And sometimes I still fall asleep. Because, as Mary Oliver says, "this too/must be a part of the story."

The best blank

Once, when I had gone to church on Sunday morning very early and found myself with an hour to kill, I walked up boulevard to Starbucks. On my way out I passed by three men who lived on the street. "Are you going to that church across from the library?" one asked.
"Why?" replied his friend.
"They have the best..." and with that I was out of earshot. I wanted to turn back, but instead I kept walking all the way back to church with a smile on my lips, happy to know we had the best _____.

Learning to Wait

This week I learned something about myself in Sunday School. Yes, I actually go to Sunday School, much as I hate saying it. Sunday School sounds like a place where somebody's mom shows a flannel graph story from the Bible and then tells you how you can know Jesus as your personal savior. My Sunday School is not that kind of Sunday School. It's just a place where some wonderfully diverse people get together for some damn good coffee and conversation and to engage a teacher who likes the questions more than the answers.

Sunday's discussion was about waiting. Active waiting. Waiting like Habbakuk pictures it standing on the watchtower scanning the horizon for God, for God's answer to his complaint. We read from the prophet Isaiah that God works on behalf of those who wait. And we tried to think about what it meant to anticipate God, to look for God, to wait for God. We recognized that the life of waiting is a life of tension and not always a happy place to live. We talked about how much we seek resolution, diminishing the tension of waiting either through controlling our circumstances or disengagement.

I thought about all the times I wait. As a child I waited eagerly for Christmas morning and the toys we would get. As a teen, the anticipation of seeing the boy I liked at a party held a a deep thrill. Now that I'm older I can't think of much I wait for with the same hope. I've learned to diminish the excitement of waiting. By anticipating less I've managed to lower my expectations. Expecting less leads to less dissapointment. Also, I've found that when you expect too much you often diminish the lovely reality of what is. Like this afternoon, when I saw the large manila envelope sitting in the mailbox, for one moment of wild hope I thought it might be the response I was hoping for about a piece of my writing. Imagine my disappointment to discover it was (just!) a letter from my nephew. (I waited for my cup of coffee to open the letter and very much enjoyed reading his journal about Flat Stanley.)

But what does that mean about how I wait for God? It seems what I believe about God informs how I wait. The problem is that although I believe with all my heart that God is good, I also believe with all my heart that he desires character and wholeness in me far more than indulging the pansy ass easy life I'm trying to live. While I'm sitting on the couch reading a novel, I'm tensely anticipating God, the parent, yelling at me to get my homework done. So I feel, ultimately, like I'm waiting for hard things to come from God. While I believe God's outcomes are good, I can't bring myself to desire the process. All I'm left with is a question: Do we have to desire what we wait for from God?

And that begs another question for educating mama: If I'm just left with a question, did I really learn anything in Sunday School?