Enter the Lenten Wilderness: Remain and Be Transformed

Wilderness, desert, place apart.  Lent invites us to embark on a journey that removes us from the multiplicity of distractions and involvements – even in brief snatches.  Through the practices of diving deep into prayer, committing to a fasting that removes the superfluous and reminds us of the central, and reaching out in love and alms without condition or counting to others, we willingly embark on the path.  We sign our consent to keep company with Jesus, to be transformed.

A couple of weeks ago, reflecting on the book of Hosea with a group, we looked together at the active words in a section of Hosea 2/3.  There God allures, leads, speaks, gives, removes idols, makes covenant, espouses-espouses-espouses, sows, has pity, names.  We respond and we call, and we respond again.  It is God who acts, who unerringly finds places and spaces in our life experiences where we can better hear and respond: often wild places, dry places, remote places.  These become, as in Hosea, doors of hope.

Lent is a calendar place and space, and one we collaborate with by entering.  We are allured, but we also compose and dispose ourselves to presence by the practices Ash Wednesday traces.  Like the early disciples, we show up.  Like those who companioned Jesus on the roads of Palestine, we are often clueless as to the curriculum, the transformation, the path we are on.  Still, our remaining with him matters.  And that is Lent.  We choose to come and to remain, as we are.  Wonders can then occur, beyond our reckoning, our recognizing, even our sight in this lifetime.

Though spring seems still far off in the mid-Atlantic of late,  hope does not disappoint, for there is an unerring pull toward life and growth that is part and parcel of this world, this universe we inhabit.  The smallest seed holds potential for something amazing to emerge that is not evident in its small encasing.

God brings us, allures us, to wildernesses and deserts so that we can recover our first loves, our enthusiasms, our joy, as disciples and loved ones.  God invites us so that we can remember what is core and release our desperate grasping at what was never ours to hold onto to begin with.  God wakes us to our sisters and brothers – on the verge of war, on the streets we pass, in the house next door, sitting at our tables and workplaces – with needs we can and must attend to, if we truly believe we are all one, are all God’s, are all amazing stardust, are all beloved ones.  Resurrection impulse leads to life, and we are all to not just believe in, but practice resurrection, as poet Wendell Barry told us.

As Lent begins, we are well reminded today (Ash Wednesday) by Pope Francis that “in the face of so many wounds that hurt us and could lead to a hardness of heart, we are called to dive into the sea of prayer, which is the sea of the boundless love of God, in order to experience his tenderness.”  It is God’s tenderness which surrounds us and which is transformative.  Our job is to show up and to stay put in God’s presence, and to imitate the love and tenderness we meet there in our interactions with each other, most especially with those in need.  Our remaining matters.  So, what to do for Lent?

Enter, remain, collaborate.  Respond, call, respond.  Wake, remember, release.  Allow, be embraced, be open.  Imitate, give, serve.  Turn, repent, rethink.  Practice, quiet, pray.  We can trust the process we enter, the path we’re on, and the One who works our transformation – whether or not we understand, perhaps even better when we do not and cannot.  Let us come to Lent, stay put, encounter faithfulness (our God), learn to love, and be shaped further into love in the ways our Lord knows best.

Mayhap you’ve seen these words of Catherine of Siena recently on social media:  “We’ve been deceived by the thought that we would be more pleasing to God in our own way than in the way God has given us.”  They strike as true.  Trust your transformation and your path to our good God, the shape and pattern of your growth to Christ’s safekeeping, but keep collaborating and watching.  God guides all paths, and will guide these 40 days.  Celebrate the work of grace – the Spirit’s creativity – in you and in the world…  and pray, fast, give.

Jean Vanier: Do Not Run Away – Be Transformed

The following is excerpted entirely from the introduction of Jean Vanier’s Befriending the Stranger.  The book packages six reflections (for a six day retreat) Jean presented to members of the community of L’Arche in the Dominican Republic.  I provide it for our reflection here because it has much to do with the invitation not to run away.  It speaks of pain and fear and hope and the Gospel.  The reflections seem appropriate for the holy week we are in…  and so I offer them to you.

[I also had the great good fortune to hear Jean Vanier speak to the assembled academic community – faculty, staff, students – at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago when I was a student there.  His is a holy presence,  informed and formed by the Gospel, especially shaped by the way he has shared his life and journeyed with women and men with disabilities.  His words bear repeating because of what they say, but also because of who he is and how his own response to God’s invitation has impacted so many.] 

Vanier introduces the retreat quoting for each individual present the prophet Hosea’s promise that God “will allure” and “bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her heart” (2:14).  “I will give her back her vineyards…” which Jean says means that God will show her how fruitful her life is, “and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.”  See if you find your heart spoken to while reading his words below.

Yes, our lives are called to bear much fruit because Jesus wants to give life to others.  We find it difficult to give life, to hold and carry people in their weakness.  We are often frightened of reality because reality can be painful and a source of disappointment.  We tend to escape into a world of illusions and to seek refuge in dreams.  We bury ourselves in ideas and theories or fill our days with distractions.

We run away from our “Valley of Achor”, which is the place of our greatest and most intimate pain.  Yet that is the very place that God calls us to enter so that it may be transformed into a door of hope.

The Valley of Achor was situated near Jericho.  It was a dangerous place, filled with snakes, scorpions and all kinds of wild beasts; it was a place of fear that people tried to avoid.  Yet God declares that this valley of misfortunie will become a coor of hope.  What a mystery; a mystery filled with hope!

There is a “Valley of Achor” in each one of us: for each of us there are events or hurts we do not want to remember, look at or come close to; there are people and experiences that we try to avoid because they bring up too much pain in us and we are frightened of pain.  Certain people disturb us; they are “strange”, “different”; we cannot bear their pain or the pain they evoke in us.  Yet God tells us that if we enter into these places of pain and welcome these people they will become for us a “door of hope”.

If we become close to the people our societies reject, exclude and crush, people who are hidden away in asylums, we will discover that they can become a “door of hope”.  So too if we accept the things inside our own selves that we reject: the blockages, the bitterness, the fears, all that we may be ashamed of; if we dare to penetrate into our inner “Valley of Achor” it will indeed become a door of hope for us.

But we cannot do it alone.  We need to walk hand in hand with Jesus, to let him guide us and reveal to us the heart of the Gospel.