Christmas and Easter

While I was still in PA, Kelsey was at school at Lancaster Theological Seminary, where I went to get my MDIV.  She came across my former theology professor, Dr. Barrett.  She told me he sent along greetings and to say hello.  He is a witty and funny guy and so I told her to ask him why God gave me a brain tumor for Christmas.  It was meant to be a humorous question and I was hoping he would have a quick and theological response that would make me smile.  I think, however, it threw him off a little, as he asked Kelsey for my email address instead of granting a response.  Sorry Dr. Barrett!

We were blessed to have Christmas together as a family and to have about a week of festivities before my seizure, but we still have unopened presents on the mantle and we just finished opening the last of our Christmas cards a few days ago.  Our coffee filter snowflakes are still taped to the window and so it is no surprise that lent creeped up on me extra quickly this year.

I've always enjoyed the seasons of a traditional church calendar.  Even though Advent and Lent aren't biblically mandated, I find it so refreshing to have a few weeks set aside to focus on particular biblical stories and to regroup my own thoughts and desires.

As I sat on the morning of Ash Wednesday looking through my regular devotions I couldn't help feeling like something was missing.  I knew I wouldn't get ashes this year and I certainly wouldn't be burning palms to make the ashes.  I wouldn't hear those powerful words that I love... from dust you have come and to dust you will return.  I wouldn't see the faces of parishioners who were looking deeply inward or answer the questions of children who stood wide eyed at the ritual.  I looked around at quite a few resources and devotions about lent and Ash Wednesday, calling for the confession of sin, for turning your life around, for handing over your vices to Jesus during this time and I really, truly felt oddly removed from it all.  I would never, ever say I am without sin, but my life lately hasn't left much time to be sinful.  I was trying to think of what behaviors I need to turn from (lack of patience, anger, frustration, doubt), but more than anything the Ash Wednesday readings were a reminder to me of our human frailty and I read them in a way as I have never read before.  Of course it is impossible for us to see the scriptures without interpreting through our life circumstances and it has always been easy for me to admit my shortcomings, as I have many, but instead of regretting my desires for worldly things or asking for forgiveness for behaviors I'm not proud of, I realized that this Lent my focus doesn't need to be on giving up or adding or even really changing, but on accepting and owning that I am but dust.  Dust that God chose to breathe life into.  Dust that God chose to give his love and joy and energy and spirit to and without God's spirit in me, I am nothing.  This brings me great joy and reminds me to be full of humility.

The Sunday before Lent in the lectionary is always the story of the Transfiguration.  In Luke 9, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the top of the mountain to pray with him. While they are there his face is transfigured and he becomes full of light.  The disciples were so mesmerized that they wanted to set up tents and stay in that moment.  I've always been told that this story is poised before Lent because it is such a mesmerizing mountaintop experience that it is to remind us of our own mountain top experiences and carry us through the valley of Lent.

I feel so intimately connected to all of this and to God's perfect timing as I truly feel great right now, surrounded by friends, in touch with so many people and loved by family and friends and perfectly enough, my radiation treatment will last just through the season of lent, likely to be finished right around Easter Sunday.  I'm so grateful for the resurrection to be on the horizon and for the reminder during this new and trying time that the joy of the resurrection is always waiting, never far, especially in scary and dark places -- in this season and in every season.

I'll never forget a lenten season at Rock Church when members carried very large boulders up to the chancel each Sunday as a reminder of the burdens we carry through life.  By the end of Lent the front of the church was so gray and heavy and represented to each of us all that weighs us down.  And then on Easter Sunday we placed all of the Easter flowers as if they had grown up through those boulders the whole time and our burdens were replaced with true beauty.  It takes a lot of faith and a lot of joy and a lot of trust to somehow see that the burdens are often part of the joy, but more importantly that the burdens, the boulders, the struggle, the death...they  never win.

In one of the rooms I was waiting in at the proton center, this sign was on the wall and I was struck by the ending... it cannot steal eternal life.  Amen!