What I am doing for Lent and the third trimester...
What am I doing for Lent?
Maybe it is better to say that this is what God and I are doing in me.
For me I am very aware that this lent ends with a baby- sometime in the Easter season I'll have a baby...
It seems profound.
And very different than say Advent.
It is especially helpful if I imagine God with me in this...and that God as her. Because metaphorical or otherwise God has done these things for each of us....
Having a baby.
Getting ready to have a baby.
Preparing my body to have a baby.
Preparing my house to recieve a baby.
Preparing my heart to welcome a baby.
Preparing my spirit for a c-section.
Preparing my spirit for a vaginal birth.
Preparing my spirit for the people that the baby will bring.
Preparing to take maternity leave at work- so get a million things done.
Imaginging myself as the parent of two.
Imagining my beloved as the parent of two.
Imaginging my daughter as a sister.
How to do this...figuring out how is what we are doing for lent?!
“Lent is not tidy. Days grow longer, the ground thaws, and the next thing we know, everything is filthy. Our windows need washing, our temples need cleansing, the earth itself needs a good bath. The English names for these months come from ancient words that reflect the need to roll up our sleeves for this seasons February (purification) and March (the spirit of war). Good names. Winter doesn’t leave without blustery battles that push thing over and mess things up and even break things. Lent, if we honestly face its fury, will leave the landscape littered with bits and pieces of ourselves
Sometimes the only antidote is to take more of the poison. And so on our foreheads we rub dirt: Eden gone to ashes, the dustbin emptied of a winters’ worth of soot, last year’s leaves riddled with worms, the broken earth turned by the plow, the dry earth thirsty for water to make it clay of a new creation. And when Lent I done and the Passover arrives we’ll have water in abundance, water to bathe our feet and water to drown the demons and water to wash away the winter.”
From the introduction to: A Lent Sourcebook: The Forty Days Edited by Robert Baker, Evelyn Kaehler, Peter Mazar. From Liturgy Training PUblications 1990.
Maybe it is better to say that this is what God and I are doing in me.
For me I am very aware that this lent ends with a baby- sometime in the Easter season I'll have a baby...
It seems profound.
And very different than say Advent.
It is especially helpful if I imagine God with me in this...and that God as her. Because metaphorical or otherwise God has done these things for each of us....
Having a baby.
Getting ready to have a baby.
Preparing my body to have a baby.
Preparing my house to recieve a baby.
Preparing my heart to welcome a baby.
Preparing my spirit for a c-section.
Preparing my spirit for a vaginal birth.
Preparing my spirit for the people that the baby will bring.
Preparing to take maternity leave at work- so get a million things done.
Imaginging myself as the parent of two.
Imagining my beloved as the parent of two.
Imaginging my daughter as a sister.
How to do this...figuring out how is what we are doing for lent?!
“Lent is not tidy. Days grow longer, the ground thaws, and the next thing we know, everything is filthy. Our windows need washing, our temples need cleansing, the earth itself needs a good bath. The English names for these months come from ancient words that reflect the need to roll up our sleeves for this seasons February (purification) and March (the spirit of war). Good names. Winter doesn’t leave without blustery battles that push thing over and mess things up and even break things. Lent, if we honestly face its fury, will leave the landscape littered with bits and pieces of ourselves
Sometimes the only antidote is to take more of the poison. And so on our foreheads we rub dirt: Eden gone to ashes, the dustbin emptied of a winters’ worth of soot, last year’s leaves riddled with worms, the broken earth turned by the plow, the dry earth thirsty for water to make it clay of a new creation. And when Lent I done and the Passover arrives we’ll have water in abundance, water to bathe our feet and water to drown the demons and water to wash away the winter.”
From the introduction to: A Lent Sourcebook: The Forty Days Edited by Robert Baker, Evelyn Kaehler, Peter Mazar. From Liturgy Training PUblications 1990.
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