I was out with a friend and her dog Ronnie, Molly’s best friend, on Wednesday morning. We were wandering and wondering together. My friend is a writer and I was asking them about their current work. They told me that something had got stuck in production. I told them I was struggling to come up with something for this week, despite spending the last two days exploring, wandering down all kinds of blind alleys and getting nowhere. We wandered and wondered for a bit longer and I eventually headed for home.
I had notes and thoughts galore, but my wandering had brought no more clarity to my wondering. I did read a rather beautiful quotation posted by Rev Laura Dobson reflecting on Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, that she had posted on Facebook It is by A. Powell Davies a Unitarian minister in the first half of the twentieth century. It read
“Be with us, O God, when we think of the wrongs we have done to other people; lest, hating ourselves for our evil-doing, we turn our hatred outward on to them. Help us to forgive ourselves, acknowledging that we are no better than we are; and then help us to believe that we can be better.”
As I read I thought it was a beautiful prayer to take into the season of Lent. It got me wondering as we begin our 40 day wander through Lent, what this season is actually about. Surely it is not just about deprivation, but about creation. About creating something beautiful for lives and in the lives of others. Surely its about love coming to life once again in human form. Well at least this seems to be what is at the end of Lent and the joy and celebration of Easter.
We have entered the season of Lent. I hope you all enjoyed your pancakes on Tuesday. On what some still call Shrove Tuesday, or as many prefer to call it “Pancake Day”, or as I prefer to call it “Flat Yorkshire Pudding Day”. How do you eat yours?
The following day “Ash Wednesday”, for Christians, marks the beginning of 40 days of fasting and self-sacrifice that lead up to Easter, the day of re-birth re-newal and new beginnings.
In the account found in Matthews Gospel, that we heard earlier. Jesus is “led by the spirit” into the wilderness, a place of transformation and temptation. He is taken to the pinnacle of the temple and to the top of a high mountain. Here he is offered the world, but rejects the allure of an easier showier more obvious path. Instead he chooses the road less travelled, the heroes path. He is tempted by “Satan” but resists the temptation. Satan is not a physical being, some horned character of cartoons, but the tempter. Satan is an illusory obstacle that keeps us from keeping our responsibilities. It is that power that distracts us from living the loving life that we can. I felt like I was distracted somewhat this week, as I found it hard to focus. Not that I had been wandering around in the desert, starved and exhausted for 40 days, so I didn’t have much of excuse for being distracted. That said I found it hard to focus on the task at hand. I am not alone.
Jesus resisting temptation is a universal tale; many of the great sages went on similar journeys, before embarking on their missions to heal their people. The Buddha had to leave the comforts of home, abandon his weeping family, shave his head and don the robes of a world renouncing ascetic when he began his journey to discover a cure for the pain of the world. Long before his revelations Muhammad used to retreat to Mount Hira, outside of Mecca, where he fasted, performed spiritual exercises and gave alms to the poor. He did this in an attempt to discover a remedy for the troubles of his time. It is currently Ramamdan, a time of fasting for Muslims. When Ghandi began his mission he left the comforts of the elite in which he had lived his whole life and travelled to India carefully observing the plight of the ordinary people.
During their own times in the wilderness the great sages found their answers. Through taking the road less travelled, the hard road, the difficult road, the answers came to them. They discovered the knowledge they needed to impact positively on their people in their time and place. This is the spiritual life in its essence. It is often the hardest most difficult path and it can certainly appear to be the loneliest, one filled with temptations. That said it is the one where the answers are usually found.
The great sages were not just wandering alone, they were wondering what they felt they must do with this one wild wonderful life.
In being called out into the wild they didn’t just wander aimlessly they wondered, often for a long time. I have heard lent being described as being a long time, as in length. The forty days are symbolic of a long time, just as 40 years in the desert symbolised a long time wandering round the desert for Moses and his people seeking the “Promised Land”. So too the story of Jesus in the wilderness echoes this struggle. His was to remain true to his covenant, theirs was to establish a religious community.
Wandering and wondering in the wild is part of everyone’s spiritual journey. I’m sure most have experienced this in recent times. The journey is individual as well as communal. It is a time of struggle, but also transformation. It reminds us that we are alone, but also not alone. As Sarah York puts it:
“We are neither where we have been nor where we are going. There is danger and possibility, risk and promise. In the wilderness, the spirit may descend like a dove and lift us on its wings of hope, then drive us into the depths of despair; it may affirm us with a gift of grace, then challenge us to change. In the stories and rituals of Eastern as well as Western religions, a journey into the wilderness represents a time when we both pursue and resist the Holy.
We may choose to enter the wilderness like the people of Yahweh, to escape bondage, or, like Henry David Thoreau, to “live deliberately.” Or we may, like Jesus, be driven there without much choice. Once there, even our markers of time and space collapse, for this wilderness is not in space or time, but is the boundless territory of the soul.”
It is easy to look at Lent as merely a time of deprivation. Of denying ourselves in solidarity. There is an element to this, people choose to give things up for Lent and deny human pleasure etc. it is the same with fasting in other traditions too. There is more to it than this though. To me it is a time of preparation. Yes, of purification, but in the sense that it is readying us for something new. Something that will be given birth to on the new day of renewal and re-birth that is Easter.
As I wandered home and thought of Easter and the enjoyment of chocolate and the Easter eggs in the shops etc my wonderings turned to a film that seems to me to be a fascinating allegory of what is at the heart of what was discovered during those wanderings and wonderings in the desert,
The film is “Chocolat” by Lasse Hallstrom. It is set during the season of Lent, in a small French town in 1959. The town Lansquenet holds fast to tradition. The Mayor of the town has the young priest in the palm of his hand and he gets him to preach sermons each week to the people about the dangers of temptation, the threat to morality posed by outsiders, and even the evils of chocolate.
A beautiful and mysterious woman Vianne enters the town and opens a chocolate shop, this infuriates the mayor. She is seen as the ultimate symbol of temptation. Her joy for life leads her to reaching out to others who are excluded in the village. She guesses their favourite chocolate and pours out her love and acceptance. All the while the mayor attempts to have her driven out of town. Throughout the film all the characters seem to go on a journey, the classic heroes journey. A journey that is the length of time, that is Lent, is perhaps all about.
The young priest Pere Henri goes on the same journey and finally he finds his voice. On Easter morning he wakes up and realises he has had enough and instead of preaching a sermon on the divinity of Jesus, instead he speaks of his humanity. He talks of the religion of Jesus, rather then the one that had been made around him. He spoke of the lessons of his life, about inclusion and universal love saying:
"We can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do. We measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include."
Isn’t this the message that came into being in the desert after those 40 days. A message that was brought to people about a new religion, a message that stood in contrast to the tribalism and blind following of rules of the time. A message that brought the spirit alive in people’s lives. a message that needs to be heard again in this our day and age. A message of inclusion of radical love; a message of universal acceptance.
So, this is my message this Lenten season. This is where my wanderings and wonderings have led. It is nothing new. It’s message that has been heard for millenniums. It might sound radical in this day and age, but I’m not sure it is. Unless love and acceptance is considered beyond the pale. I invite you to journey with me this Lenten season and see what you might uncover and perhaps discover as we wander and wonder, sometimes alone and sometimes together.
I’m going to end with a little Mary Oliver. It’s a kind of question really. The poem is “A Summer’s Day”, so yes it is not seasonally correct, but hey we are somewhat unorthodox round here. So here it is.
“Summer’s Day” by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"
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