Ash Wednesday

Today I wrestled with what this season of Lent means for me. I was reading some of Thomas Merton's thoughts on lent in his journals (A Year With Thomas Merton) a day or two ago. He wrote this: 

"Unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, dies, itself remains alone." So we cast off the flesh, not out of contempt, but in order to heal the flesh in the mercy of penance and restore it to the Spirit to which it belongs. And all creation waits in anguish for our victory and our bodies' glory.

(Feb 17, 1953)

Merton is one of my heroes, as anyone who has spent much time with me in the last couple of years would know! And I think his words here are right on. But I don't know if this is the time in my life to enter into Lent with the intention of denying the body, of aiming to part with attachments to people and things. I trust that this is eventually where I will be, but not yet (this is emphatically not the sort of self-denial that leads to withdrawal and leaving the world behind, but the type that ultimately leads to a fuller enjoyment of life, a wider embrace of the world and a deeper capacity to love). In the spirit of what I wrote in the first post, before I get into self-denial I must have a more well crafted self to deny! To me that would include a career, love, a few more tangible accomplishments under my belt, etc. What I have in mind is what Joseph Campbell called fulfilling your hero's journey. He had this to say (Italics mine):

One young lady came up to me, and she said, very seriously, "Oh, Mr. Campbell, you just don't know about the modern generation. We go directly from infancy to wisdom."

I said, "That is great. All you've missed is life."

So, I say the way to find your myth is to find your zeal, to find your support, and to know what stage of life you're in. The problems of youth are not the problems of age. Don't try to live your life too soon. By listening too much to gurus, you try to jump over the whole darn thing and back off and become wise before you've experience that in relation to which there is some point in being wise. This thing, wisdom, has to come gradually.

There are something like 18 billion cells in the brain alone. There are no two brains alike; there are no two hands alike; there are no two human beings alike. You can take your instructions and your guidance from others, but you must find your own path…

What is is we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. 

-Pathways to Bliss

My prayer this morning was to work out what this Lent ought to mean for me, and to own and embrace that it's not going to mean for me what it meant for our beloved Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, no matter how much I admire him and have been nourished and shaped by his life and thought (After all, even he had his wild years; he fathered an illegitimate child by the time he was my age. Looks like I have some catching up to do... kidding). So I was encouraged when afterwards, I read this in Richard Rohr's Ash Wednesday meditation in his book for Lent (italics his):

"It seems that we need beginnings, or everything eventually devolves and declines into unnecessary and sad endings. You were made for so much more! So today you must pray for the desire to desire! Even if you do not feel it yet, ask for new and even unknown desires. For you will eventually get what you really desire!

…You are the desiring of God. God desires through you and longs for Life and Love through you and in you. Allow it, speak it, and you will find your place in the universe of things… Make your desires good and far-reaching on this Ash Wednesday of new beginnings. You could not have such desires if God had not already desired them first - in you and for you and as you!" 

-Wondrous Encounters

So this Lent it's my hope and prayer that I step more fully into myself, to open up to new things, to love, to risk, to mystery, to stepping out away from what's safe, comfortable, routine, and out into the precipice, knowing that I might fall flat on my face but embracing it all as part of the dance. (The image here is Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade, taking that leap of faith off the ledge into thin air on the way to the Grail)

I desire to die to the old self that gives too much permission to fear and laziness (all those "what if?" questions) so that when Easter rolls around, I may truly be a new creation. 

Or, maybe in other words, as Sean Witty and the First Baptist Church in Newton have been saying it lately, I desire to work out "What does love require of me?" Love of God, love of others, absolutely, but also love of myself.  I don't see any division in these three. 


What does this mean more concretely? Some of that I won't share now but one thing I've chosen to do is write a meaningful, expressive post for this blog every week. I want to be a better writer, so this is me making that happen. I'm also going to try to get a psychology internship at Harvard or another top school in the Boston area this summer to prepare for doctoral studies in psychology post-Berklee. 

"Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now."

-Sister Joan Chittister, OSB