Ash Wednesday, 2010

Shrove Tuesday pancakes
and with real maple syrup—
before lenten fare.

Sometime early last December I began writing haiku poetry, something that I hadn’t done in a long time. I was preparing for a retreat talk and was looking for ideas for an activity that would engage people in the biblical text we were using. Haiku are short poems, no longer than 17 syllables written in three lines of five, seven and five syllables. In their brevity, haiku capture a thought and feeling about a fleeting moment, something that intrigues the poet’s heart. Haiku are wonderful for capturing the essence, the pearls of wisdom that we read in Holy Scripture.

This haiku I wrote as I was thinking about pancakes for supper on Shrove Tuesday and the delight of having real maple syrup, a treat before the simpler lenten fare which begins with Ash Wednesday. You know the saying, “absence makes the heart grow fonder”? Well, fasting from things, a common practice in Lent, is to make the enjoyment of them ever sweeter when you take them up once more.

Shortly after I began writing haiku again I found a book called Haiku – The Sacred Art: A Spiritual Practice in Three Lines, by Margaret D. McGee [see excerpts here], which I eagerly read. In it was a challenge to write a haiku a day for 100 days. As of today I am at #33 with the haiku on Shrove Tuesday. It is a challenge and a discipline. It puts me in mind of the season of Lent we are approaching and of the various ways people will mark this season.

Some people will mark the season of Lent by giving up things such as chocolate or coffee or wine. The Church generally abstains from using Alleluias during lent. The Rev. Margaret Guenther, Anglican priest, renowned author, speaker and spiritual director, once suggested that people might fast from the media for a while. Imagine giving up television during Lent or the internet. Rather than letting go of things, other people will intentionally take on spiritual practices during Lent such as practising patience, kindness, gentleness, and making donations — what we used to call almsgiving.

Both ways, giving up and taking on, get at the essence of the spiritual reasons behind why we do these things. Any spiritual discipline we take on is to help us put on the mind and heart of Christ in our daily lives in an intentional way. Practising the discipline for 40 days will help make it a habit. Or you might take on something like the 100 day haiku challenge instead. May you have a blessed and holy Lent.

Sr. Elizabeth Ann, SSJD

Lenten Musings

In the name of God who created us, who redeemed us, and who sanctifies us. Amen.

This is the first Sunday of Lent. A time when we recall those 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness fasting and prayer. After those 40 days, Jesus is tempted by the Tempter, the Evil One. In his weakened state, Jesus still overcomes temptation and show us his tremendous focus on his mission in the world, which was and still is, to show us just how very much God loves us.

Nothing could come between Jesus and his sense of mission. This would become a habitual way of Jesus’ living. Jesus would not be put off his mission to show us God’s love even for consideration of his own personal safety or even for other practical reasons.

After his 40 day fast, the gospel tells us that Jesus was famished. I imagine that he was terribly weak as well. His first temptation is to turn stones into bread, to take something which God had created just to be and turn it into something totally different just to satisfy a need. This would have been going against God’s will who created the stones in the first place, just to be stones. So Jesus replies to the Evil One, that the “word” of God is the chief nourishment. We live the way God created us and know God’s love for us there, in whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves, in weakness or strength.
Next Jesus is taken to the pinnacle of the temple which overlooks the Kidron Valley - the highest point of the temple. The Evil One tells Jesus to demonstrate to all that Jesus is God’s Son by throwing himself off the temple for all to see, trusting in God’s protection. Every one would have seen this demonstration and know Jesus’ divine nature.

But Jesus refuses to test God’s protection and to unnecessarily risk his life which would then make a mockery of his real martyrdom, of his sacrifice on the cross which was to come which was the real demonstration of trust in God’s love for us and of Jesus own love for us.

Finally the Evil One, the Devil, invites Jesus to prefer personal wealth and power, to choose strength over what the world regards as weakness when we are poor and needy, weak and powerless. Jesus again demonstrates how focused he is on his own sense of mission to show us how much God loves us, and how God’s power is shown in our weakness, when he says in reply . . . “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”

Our worship is our response to God’s tremendous love for us. God’s love has come to us first, not because we are good, not because we are sinless, not because we are powerful, but God loves us just as we are.

Jesus refusal to let anything come ahead of his sense of mission, of his sense of the love of God for us, of his own love for us, was to become a habitual way of life for Jesus. This habitual way of living, of demonstrating that God’s power is shown in our weakness, had its ultimate fulfillment in his death on the cross leading to his resurrection and ascension into glory. Jesus has given us a model to live our lives within the ordinary circumstances and situations in which we find ourselves, and to let God’s power and love manifest itself through our weakness. Amen.

Sr. Elizabeth Ann SSJD
Lenten Musings at http://www.ssjd.ca
1 March 2009