The Project - Day 2

February 26, 2010

The Project - Day 2

Most people love Advent and so do I, but mostly what I love are all the pagan trappings that have been hooked on to Christianity like a shiny ornament. I love all things Jul, the tree, the mistletoe, wassail, solstice music by Paul Winter and Golden Bough and all the delicious food that attends the season. However, I have a private chuckle at slogans like “He’s the Reason for the Season” since I believe that no, He’s not. The reason for the season is the death and rebirth of the year, which is why we celebrate His birth at this time. I love the Nativity, but I feel it is part of the entire “rebirth” cycle that happens at the turning of the year.

Lent is when I feel like a Christian. While there are certainly pagan traditions in abundance surrounding Easter and the days leading to it, I’ve never connected with them in the same way I do the traditions of Advent. For me, Lent is like faith, extremely personal and the traditions are my own, or at least the ones I have chosen in my adulthood.

When I think of Lenten seasons past, I think of my years with my college choir and their monumental spring concert, I think of Wednesday nights at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine with Madeline L’Engle presiding, I think of receiving ashes at Grand Central Station, I think of solitary walks through the Cloisters Museum, scribbling in my notebook and taking pictures of the view. I remember my first year in Colorado, snowed in past all reason and finally escaping for a solitary vacation, completely alone with my thoughts.

It stands to reason, I suppose, that my Lenten observance has suffered some in the years since I married and had a child. Lent was a time when I celebrated my alone-ness, when I turned to good use what was often a burdensome solitude. Now I am blessed with my own family and solitude is an infrequent burden. Also, as my husband is Jewish we try to spend Passover with his family, which has frequently meant I miss out on Holy Week. Don’t get me wrong, I loves me some Pesach, but I miss the solemnity of that transition from reflection to joy that for me means Spring, rebirth and second chances.

Many people observe Lent by fasting, physically or psychologically. They give up meat, chocolate, gossip or in more contemporary currency, facebook or the internet. I’ve never totally connected with this tradition, as most of the people I know who observe it discard their Lenten fasts about as quickly as their New Year’s Resolutions. I just never saw the point. Lately though I’ve been thinking about fasting, in a spiritual sense. Fasting is a mortification of the body that is supposed to bring us closer to God. Put another way, I believe Lent is when we seek to find that thing which is separating us from God and to remove it from our lives as best we can. (Following this logic, I could never give up chocolate, for I am sure it brings me closer to God!)

I thought about giving up Facebook, or texting or some other kind of fast on my addiction to technology, but none of that felt like an authentic barrier to my relationship with God, or that part of myself that is still and quiet enough to connect with whatever power that exists when I pray. The problem is not in the technology but in myself. Then, the other day when I was thinking about how I feel like I have given up my artistic self, it came to me. If Lent is about giving up those things that separate from God, from the creative force, then I needed to give up what was blocking me from creating.

So this year, for the first time, I am attempting to observe Lent by fasting, or abstinence. This year I am abstaining from excuses. I am abstaining from fear. I am abstaining from lowered expectations. I am abstaining from all things that separate me from my own creative force and therefore the original Creative Force in whose image I am made. May God give me the strength to prevail.