I don’t usually participate in Lent, the season marking the weeks before Jesus’ last days. It’s kinda “churchy” and I don’t do churchy.
But this site and this blog and this entry hit me in all the feels right now, and I cannot express to you how apt this is:
“We lament because paradoxically, the cure for the pain is in our engagement of it.”
I am lamenting some poor choices I’ve made very recently. I’ll confess I’ve had two sleepless nights so far as I consider over and over what I did, and how I broke my own principles and my own values.
I lament that with all my certainty of purpose I can’t get it right and I stumble around and bump into people.
I’m learning that when we experience the pain of regret and repentance, that we need to experience it and not run away from it. In an age where we want entertainment and relief and 30-second meals, there is a positive good to sit in lamentation for our words and deeds when they go wrong.
Take a look at the blog and the entries. There are ways to explore our situation and the soberness of the necessary response.
(hat tip The Won Percent)
So glad you’re giving Lent a try and happy to share LL. As a nondenominational Christian, I totally relate to the ritual fatigue. Lenten lamentations stuck with me and inspired some significant change in my outlook. I hope you’ll continue reading along with me. It’s worth it!
I think this is my first time in lamenting. There is a time for joy and a time for sadness. So much joy in the good works of our great God. And so much sadness in the destruction and isolation from the works of humanity.
I got my cross this morning and I wear it in humility because of the brokenness of humanity and my contributions to that. I wear the cross as a reminder that we are all dust and to dust we return. I wear the cross as a reminder that there is great cost when there is great love and great hope. I wear the cross as a symbol of mourning and penitence.
Thanks for posting. The picture/image on the street is glorious and humble.
Another link to share, this time from Northern Ireland.
Adrienne Maree Brown writes, “i can already imagine future-me insisting that i know who has THE story in Northern Ireland, even as i recognize that the power of my experience here is being exposed to so many stories, so many perspectives of pain, persecution, regret, ignorance, resistance.
this desire to shape the story (of Northern Ireland and other places we go) speaks to trauma based tension in a way i recognize – after harm there is a desire to do with narrative what could not be done in person, clean up the story and claim a victory. but there’s no neat story here, and the main victory is not winning or losing, but sacrificing and living. these people who look so much alike have a coded, deep experience of being othered.”
http://adriennemareebrown.net/2019/02/10/ireland-impressions/?fbclid=IwAR1pHh_Ak6o688WjtLRCd18_lF67qp7XLoml1Q-bKh3KiZOoLW2CsbUgJA8
That’s really good insight, David.
The essence of our faith is, I think, not only the common-ness of our God but the common-ness of our own humanity. We are all one, and we can enjoy the multitudinous differences while celebrating our union as one humanity.