Going Nowhere This Lent

It's been quite a long time since I have written anything on spirituality. I've posted of my outrage at the state of our country and my disgust with the actions of the leadership. I've posted jokes and trivia. But now it's Lent, and Lent is one of my favorites of the church seasons, along with the Advent. It seems that the preparation periods draw me more so than other seasons, with their sense of expectancy, the sense of something coming.

So far this Lenten season seems to be somewhat of a failure. Perhaps, it's because I was traveling on Ash Wednesday and missed the initiatory ritual of the season, the ashes, but I cannot seem to get started and, therefore, I'm not getting anywhere.

Before Lent, when I tried to decide what my Lenten discipline would be this year, nothing seemed quite right until I was able to half-articulate on another blog that my desire for this season of Lent and beyond was to increase in quantity and quality those times when I seemed to be at my best in following the way laid out by Jesus in the Gospels - as seldom and as weak and unproductive as my efforts during those times seemed to be. The method I'm trying is to stay centered in Jesus, the Word of God, and his words in the Gospels, Jesus who loves me and is ever-present with me. Even as I must focus on other matters, I'd like to take brief, but frequent, breaks to draw inwardly to a consciousness of that presence, until the sense of the God's presence becomes something of a habit, with the hope that, in the end, I will be changed for the better, that I will be enabled to put into practice the teachings of Our Lord with more success and for a greater portion of my time. I don't know how this will go, or even if the method makes any sense at all, but I will try and see what happens.

Now I had written the above, painfully and slowly, with many revisions, still not getting to where I wanted to go in articulating my goal and describing the centering process, which is, in a way, a physical experience.

So. While taking a break from my struggles, I visited Of Course, I Could Be Wrong to find that MadPriest had posted a sermon which explains it all for me. Did that ever take the wind out of my sails, pop my balloon, take the stuffing out of me - I think of any number of metaphors which signify a taking-down!

I want you to think back to a time in your life when you felt an incredible amount of love for somebody, or something, maybe a pet, or, maybe even, a religious experience that was centred around a feeling of great love.

Now don’t think about it using words. Just try to experience the feeling you had, once again. If you’re like me you’ll probably feel it in the pit of your stomach. I wonder why that is.

Right, now I want you to imagine that you have to tell somebody about the way you just felt. Try to come up, in your own minds, with the words you will need to describe fully the feeling you felt inside of you.

Now, I am completely certain that, even if you are as good a poet as Elizabeth Barrett Browning you will fail miserably in conveying what you felt inside. You will only scratch the surface and end up saying to the other person, “Well, you know what I mean, you know what it’s like.”

The thing is, it is difficult enough to describe a physical object to somebody else. When it comes to describing emotional stuff we are, always, at a loss for words.

Well, dammit, that's it! And don't you know that he starts the sermon with Elizabeth Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" All my struggles and there it is laid out for me after the fact. I tell you, I'm feeling a little frustrated. All that effort, and had I waited a day or so, I would have had it without the struggle.

The physical sense of God's presence is centered in the pit of my stomach. It's as if Father, Jesus, and Spirit fit in that little place inside me, filling that space with love and giving me peace. It's as though the whole Gospel is there inside, and all I need do is reach in and take and share with everyone I meet the love and the Good News that is right there inside me.

Now whether this centering process will have the desired effect is a whole other question, to which I don't have an answer yet. It has seemed to work to good effect recently, because in the centering, I feel a peace which seems to extend to my relations with the people and events in my life in a beneficial manner.

My other discipline is to attend the Thursday Evening Prayer service at my church, which is followed by soup and sandwiches and then a DVD presentation by Bishop N. T. Wright on his series Simply Christian, followed by a discussion.

Last night, the subject of the talk was evil. Bishop Wright and a professor from Duke University shared a conversation on the the problem of evil in the world which Christ has redeemed and in which he has established his kingdom. I preferred Bishop Wright's comments to those of the professor from Duke. Last year, we watched DVDs from the Alpha series during Lent. I'm afraid I didn't care for them at all. I like Bishop Wright's presentations much better than Nicky Gumble's.

After watching the DVD, we had a lively discussion - very lively, at the end - especially between one of our young parishioners and - surprise! - moi. He is a candidate for the priesthood, and I am quite fond of him. I hope we didn't frighten the others with the intensity of our discussion, (OK, argument) but I'm sure we are fine with each other. He reads my blog, so I have to say nice things about him. In all seriousness, I am delighted that he was accepted as a candidate for the priesthood, and I believe he will make a wonderful priest.

Thanks be to God.