Beholding

Forty days of longer gaze

I have washed the ashen cross off of my forehead. Sunlight greets me a bit earlier every morning. As it sets, I really crave a drink.

Welcome to Lent.

Now the season of preparation, fasting, prayer and generosity has begun for real. We settle in, together. If anything, this time is a turning inward to rediscover community. the inner collective that bonds us all as creatures of dust and starlight, blood and water. We know well the penitential meanings of this time. And they’re not bad: I do need to come face to face with my faults, my addictions, my habitual choices towards self-centeredness. The speed with which I judge my neighbors.

Perhaps we are less well acquainted with the nourishing meanings of Lent. The word itself simply means “Spring,” as the days are lent-ngthening toward the equinox. We stand, soaking up that good Vitamin D like little Wall-E in the Pixar film, recharging. Lent is about remembering we are alive.

To explore this life-giving, life-adding side of the season, I offer a simple practice. It’s so gentle it’s almost a mini-practice. See if it speaks to you:

This Lent, I am going out on the front porch every morning and staring at the maple tree in the front yard. Staring at it for forty seconds.

if you wondered whether I am also giving up coffee, the answer is nooooo.

A friend recently taught me a “fifteen seconds” rule for slowing and stilling our attention in our world of stolen focus and frenetic pace. Beholding one thing—a mountain, a potted plant, your lover’s face—for a sustained fifteen seconds invites our brain (and soul) to slow down and be still. Just the quarter of a minute makes such a difference for our nervous system and mental health.

I’ve Lent-ngthened the practice (see what I did there) to forty seconds, mostly to honor the number of days in this season and biblical theme of renewal. I wonder what I will notice about my own surroundings, and about Mother Maple who has watched over us these seventeen years we have lived with her. She’s already budding.

The cross of ashes will accompany me too as it goes deep under my skin and connects me to the cross of oil made at my baptism, connecting me to the sacred rhythms of death and life, calling me into the shared life of the Body of Christ. And as the cravings come, I can thank God for my humanity and for the gifts of creation all around me, opting not to numb myself away from the harder aspects of being human. As I make a discipline of beholding the world, receiving the day, I find I am being held by the good Creator and the cycles of life turning toward Spring.

Welcome to Lent. I’m grateful to be alive with you.