Lenten Reflections

I have no more room in my heart for ashes.

It is late winter. We’ve survived the shortest and coldest days of the year.

Over the next 40 days to three months, animals will come out of hibernation, trees out of dormancy, and humans release our bodies (and hopefully minds and spirits) from winter conservation. Our bodies and blood vessels loosen their winter tightening that functions to help keep us warm.

We experience a physiological release, including a lowering of our blood pressure, that heightens in order to pump blood through winter-narrowed blood vessels.

Why then, is the Christian season of Lent focused on restriction when all that is natural in the world is awakening to freedom and new growth?

Why were early Christians of the fourth century inspired to create Lent by replicating the fasting and prayer of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as their preparation for Holy Week (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter)?

Theologically, the Christian Church has traditionally articulated Lent as a restrictive season in which the faithful avoid self-indulgence in order to repent for their sins. Today, many still “give up” a pleasurable food, drink, or activity as their primary “spiritual” practice for Lent.

More recently, progressive Christians have transitioned to understanding Lent as a time for spiritual renewal, which includes healthy and more prosocial spiritual practices. Yet, the ideas of self-discipline, restriction, and suppression remain present, within a season too often experienced as an obligation. Over the years I’ve witnessed many Christians both articulate this more progressive theology while also mentioning what they are restricting or giving up in their lives. Theological and ritual transformation is in progress, while we continue to grasp tightly to a perceived need for penance and control.

There are many theological explanations and considerations about the purpose and meaning of Lenten restriction and penance. Yet, as I continue to wrestle with my own pain and griefs, and our collective awakening to spring under the threat of nuclear world war, I am just done.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are the opposite of what I need. My mind, spirit, and body are already in so much pain, that the thought of further restriction is incarcerating. The idea of repenting from sin, while I make mistakes daily as my body and mind continue to navigate grief and post-partum life messily in this world, feels self-harming.

The theological concept that God would want us, God’s beloved, to spend 40 days focused on restriction and repentance instead of in new life, breaks my heart while I mother my eight month old baby boy.

I, along with the natural world, need freedom and new life. I crave the warm touch of the sun’s rays, the joy and wonder of watching the earth bloom, and the opportunity to move my body and breath with greater ease under the sky. I believe that it is God’s very heart that God’s children have the freedom to joyfully experience creation and new life.

So why Lent? Every year this question seems to weigh heavily on my Christian and pastor heart. It is something we are “supposed to do,” that I resist, usually more quietly. But this year Lent is unbearable in the face of how much grief, fear, and pain we are carrying.

I wonder if for fourth century Christians Lent manifested the wilderness they experienced in the violent transition to absolute rule after the so-called height of Greek “civilization” where the seeds of “democracy” grew for some members of society (non-slave men) alongside philosophy, art, architecture, and literature, and the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Was Lent a theological construct to help these free men understand their own pain, violence, loss of power, and grief?

I don’t mean to excuse our individual and collective need to reflect on, apologize for, and change our behaviors around how we harm one another and ourselves—separating ourselves from healthy and meaningful relationship to one another and God.

Neither do I mean to suggest that grief and lament are not natural parts of what it means to be human and also divine.

What I do need more than anything is to not feel obligated to the Church to continue to choose pain and penance as a spiritual practice.

I am exhausted with grief, I cannot spiritually choose Ash Wednesday as traditionally practiced, nor another 40 days of Lent. I know deep in my bones that Easter has not yet arrived and still may not arrive for me on its scheduled date of April 17th. And yet, we are in a season of spiritual, natural, and global preparation for new life.

As my gardener and Seed Keeper coach Joy Persall said to me this week, “This is a season of assessing what seeds I have. Are they viable? Are they too old? Should I try to grow them out? Do they have validity? And what will my soil need this year?” (working with Joy is part of a national UCC grant Juniper Formation received for new church starts this year)

We are preparing for new life and growth. What we need is a season of reimagining the world, when the world is falling apart—breaking open to new ways of being.

The Empire that killed Jesus, and continues today to thwart liberation would have us remain in punitive, fear-based, scarcity frameworks. It is our calling as Christians to seek the freedom and new life that our Creator intended for us, and offers us in the gift of Christ, and the always present Holy Spirit.

Prepare your seeds and soil, they are our best chance at survival. While so small and seemingly insignificant, “it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Matthew 12:32).

May you plant seeds of justice, so that the birds of peace may make their home in our branches this Lent and always.

Love,

Rev. Dr. Jenny Whitcher, Ph.D.

Minister of Prophetic Formation

jenny@juniperformation.org

This Lent, we invite you to join us in scriptural reflection and spiritual practice in our ReFrame app, and in community reflection in our new online community.

Beginning Monday, March 7, Juniper Formation Leaders will post scriptural reflections, practices, and journal prompts to the ReFrame app Monday through Friday each week until Easter.

To join us:

• Download the ReFrame App at: https://reframe.glideapp.io, where you will receive daily scriptural reflection, spiritual practices, and reflective journal prompts.
• Explore or become a member of our new online community, where we will post the daily scriptural reflection from ReFrame to the “Home” feed, and engage with you online in reflection and discussion.

ReFrame is an app-based discipleship community built around the idea that better rituals make better disciples. Framing our days through faithful and meaningful discipleship co-creates more loving, just, and kind communities and lives.

Our team of diverse content creators build out coaching-oriented discipleship prompts every week, Monday through Friday. These scripture-based frames are followed up with an afternoon prompt for reflection and an evening journal to end your day.

Once in the app, you can invite others to join a small group with you. These co-ops are places where you can connect and share.

We look forward to joining you in spiritual renewal this Lent!

Your Lenten ReFrame Writers,

Theo Isoz (they/them), Keisha Wiggan (she/her), Javon Bracy (she/her), Jason Whitehead (he/him), and Jenny Whitcher (she/her).

P.S. If you have any questions about the online faith community we are building, please reach out to us at info@juniperformation.org