Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and so begins the season of Lent in the Western church. Over the last several years I have observed this tradition of Christianity each year as a way to try to grow closer to God. Some years I've done the traditional giving up of a food item (Microbrewed beer was the hardest) while other years I've given up my time to read (once the Summa Theologica by Acquinas). Some years have been better and some years have seemed like I was going through the motions.
This year I've decided to do something very different. Let me see if I can explain where this has come from. This weekend my wife and I took our once in a blue moon trip to the mall to get a few things and look at what we've been missing. She wanted to go into a store I wasn't interested so I wandered over to B. Dalton's (now conveniently owned by Barnes and Noble) to browse. As I looked to the new and notable titles and through the current events rack I saw book after book that seemed to do nothing but trash another group. "All Liberals are idiots and want to destroy America!" shouted some while others cried out about how "George Bush has betrayed us!" No middle ground, no attempt at reasonableness, no seeming desire to fix anything. Literally it was book after book that branded someone else as the bad guy and then explained why you should hate "them" and their politics/social theory/theology/economics/whatever. Walking out of the store, I was crushed under a huge weight of heaviness. I've been struggling with it ever since.
In Lent, one of the things we are supposed to do is embark on a journey of self-examination that will lead us closer to our Lord in our attitudes and our behaviors. As my brothers in the East say, Lent is the single greatest time for Theosis in a Christian's life. The journey must start within and as I looked within over the last couple of days I realize that all of the negativity really starts with me. Maybe I don't read those sorts of books but I think those same sorts of thought about my students, my wife, my friends and myself. So I have resolved to give up negativity for Lent.
I will most assuradely fail at this.
All of the food fasts and the like I can do. Given the discipline I learned in grad school and in my training, giving up anything physical isn't really that hard unless it causes me to be physically damaged (like giving up meat for forty days while training). What I must do is look deep into myself and see where all the negativity comes from. Is it fear? Doubt? Anger? Do undertake this journey I will need to spend more time in prayer. I will need to read more Scripture and more writings by those who have travelled the path before me. I will need to meditate on the goodness of God.
And still I know I will fail.
Yet each day I will get back up and try again. Probably for me it will be every hour. Yet by doing so I will find the Spirit there to help me. Rather than focusing on finding the negative I can look at growing the fruit of the Spirit in my life. The idea is not just some sort of positive thinking, ignore the reality of things sort of "spin control" here but instead an attempt to see God in all things and most of all in myself and those people around me.
In this I will fail, but in the attempt of trying I will succeed in growing closer to my God which is the purpose of the journey in the first place.
Thanks for Reading.
