Forty Days -- A Long Time But Not Too Long
Preaching
Gathering Up the Fragments
Preaching As Spiritual Practice
The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
-- Isaiah 58:11-12
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
-- 2 Corinthians 6:2c
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
-- Matthew 6:21
The season of Lent is a fixed period of time -- forty days -- counting backward from Easter Sunday (skipping Sundays) to mark its beginning, always on a Wednesday, which we call Ash in reference to the ashes we will shortly place on our foreheads as a reminder of our mortality. The reason Lent moves around in the calendar year, some years coming as early as the first week in February, other years not beginning until mid-March, is that Easter, unlike Christmas, is not a fixed date. It moves around according to the rhythms of the sun and the moon. Easter Day falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox.
The forty days of Lent are patterned after the great biblical rhythms of forty -- the forty years the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness before entering the promised land; the forty days Jesus spent in his own wilderness, in prayer, fasting, and spiritual preparation before beginning his public ministry. Forty is a symbolic number in the Bible. It signifies a long time. Forty days is long enough that if we are to do anything consistently in that time, we will have to think about it. It will take effort and intention. If we rely on our feelings alone -- whether or not we feel like doing something, chances are good we won't make it for forty days. Yet, forty days is not forever. Lent is a long enough period of time to get our attention but not so long that we can't see past it.
Given that Lent is essentially time, I ask you to consider with me our experience of time. "What is time?" Saint Augustine asked sixteen centuries ago. "Provided no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know."1
In her book, Receiving the Day, Christian author, Dorothy C. Bass, wrote:
Time is a given and time is a gift. We receive it in increments that flow from the past into the future, a certain number of hours each day, a certain number of days each year, a certain span of life whose duration we do not know in advance. Making good use of the time we are given is important, to be sure, and date books and other aids can help us do this. But when our emphasis on using time displaces our awareness of time as a gift, we find that we are not so much using time as permitting time to use us. That is what is happening to more and more of us, more and more often.2
How might we think about time this Lent, and reclaim the gift of it, whether the hours stretch out slowly, marked by boredom or pain, or whether the days fly by, unnoticed in the frenzy of all that we feel we must accomplish?
We have friends who teach in a boarding school, which is as complex and busy a work setting as I have ever witnessed. Their schedules whirl around nearly constant obligations, not merely of teaching, but of surrogate parenting, dorm duty, coaching, grading papers, and administration. The great compensation for them is, of course, the long stretch of summer vacation. "But what kind of life is it," one of them once asked me, "if I am simply enduring whole chunks of time throughout the year just to arrive at summer? I feel as if I am willing away my life." Clearly, she needed to find a way to cherish the gift of all her time, not merely the three months she didn't teach. How can we do something of the same, receive each day as a gift, and not rush through or feel we must simply endure precious portions of the only life we have?
Here is where spiritual practice can help us, by giving us the means to mark the days -- starting with these forty days of Lent. Spiritual practice needn't be a complex, time-consuming endeavor. It can be as simple as waking up and at some moment in those early hours pausing to give thanks. "This is the day the Lord has made," writes the psalmist, "let us be glad and rejoice in it." And at day's end, we might pause again, looking back on our experience. "How was your day?" we often ask one another in greeting. What if we plumbed that question a bit? How was your day? What good or hard things happened? What are you grateful for? What are you struggling with or what do you regret? Where did you meet God or feel touched by grace?
Another simple spiritual practice is to consider a question or struggle or dream that lives on the edges of our consciousness, the things we think about as we're drifting off to sleep, or worry about beneath the surface, or hope for, perhaps in secret. Whatever it is, we can simply devote a few minutes each day and bring it to the surface, considering the question, the struggle, or the dream, opening ourselves to God, and allowing ourselves, bit by bit, to live into its truth. This is what someone once called "back burner thinking," slow and steady, in the midst of doing other things.
I was making a pot of soup while writing these thoughts. I put the pot on early and added ingredients over time. For several hours all I did was get up periodically and stir the pot. While I was doing other things, the soup was still cooking. I wonder if the "slow cooking" of the important questions, struggles, or dreams we carry isn't like that, too. Eventually we will find clarity, or be shown a path, or experience forgiveness, but in the meantime, all we may need to do is stir the pot and let God work while we're doing other things.
My spiritual practice this Lent will be reclaiming the gift of time. I intend to begin each morning with a brief prayer of thanks, inspired by the practice of many African-American Christians to pray words like, "Thank you, God, for waking me up this morning, for putting shoes on my feet, clothes on my back, and food on my table. Thank you, God, for health and strength and the activities of my limbs. Thank you that I awoke in my right mind, mostly."3
Then in the evening, or at the end of the day, I intend to look back and reflect on where I found joy, where I struggled or experienced pain, where I met God, or was touched by grace. And, I intend to keep track of the questions of my heart, each day, in writing.
Let me end with a poem by the Sufi mystic, Rumi, which speaks powerfully of God's sense of time with and for us:
I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you to my heart.
I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had, and lift you like a prayer to the sky.
If no one else recognizes you, I do, because you are my heart and my soul.
Don't run away, accept your wounds, and let bravery be your shield.
It takes a thousand years for the perfect being to evolve.
Every step of the way I will walk with you and never leave you stranded.
Be patient; do not open the lid too soon.
Simmer away, until you are ready.4
____________
1. Quoted in Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, by Dorothy C. Bass (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), p. viii.
2. Ibid, p. 2.
3. Ibid, p. 19.
4. Maryam Mafi, Rumi: Hidden Music (London: Thorsons, 2002), p. 147.
-- Isaiah 58:11-12
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!
-- 2 Corinthians 6:2c
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
-- Matthew 6:21
The season of Lent is a fixed period of time -- forty days -- counting backward from Easter Sunday (skipping Sundays) to mark its beginning, always on a Wednesday, which we call Ash in reference to the ashes we will shortly place on our foreheads as a reminder of our mortality. The reason Lent moves around in the calendar year, some years coming as early as the first week in February, other years not beginning until mid-March, is that Easter, unlike Christmas, is not a fixed date. It moves around according to the rhythms of the sun and the moon. Easter Day falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox.
The forty days of Lent are patterned after the great biblical rhythms of forty -- the forty years the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness before entering the promised land; the forty days Jesus spent in his own wilderness, in prayer, fasting, and spiritual preparation before beginning his public ministry. Forty is a symbolic number in the Bible. It signifies a long time. Forty days is long enough that if we are to do anything consistently in that time, we will have to think about it. It will take effort and intention. If we rely on our feelings alone -- whether or not we feel like doing something, chances are good we won't make it for forty days. Yet, forty days is not forever. Lent is a long enough period of time to get our attention but not so long that we can't see past it.
Given that Lent is essentially time, I ask you to consider with me our experience of time. "What is time?" Saint Augustine asked sixteen centuries ago. "Provided no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know."1
In her book, Receiving the Day, Christian author, Dorothy C. Bass, wrote:
Time is a given and time is a gift. We receive it in increments that flow from the past into the future, a certain number of hours each day, a certain number of days each year, a certain span of life whose duration we do not know in advance. Making good use of the time we are given is important, to be sure, and date books and other aids can help us do this. But when our emphasis on using time displaces our awareness of time as a gift, we find that we are not so much using time as permitting time to use us. That is what is happening to more and more of us, more and more often.2
How might we think about time this Lent, and reclaim the gift of it, whether the hours stretch out slowly, marked by boredom or pain, or whether the days fly by, unnoticed in the frenzy of all that we feel we must accomplish?
We have friends who teach in a boarding school, which is as complex and busy a work setting as I have ever witnessed. Their schedules whirl around nearly constant obligations, not merely of teaching, but of surrogate parenting, dorm duty, coaching, grading papers, and administration. The great compensation for them is, of course, the long stretch of summer vacation. "But what kind of life is it," one of them once asked me, "if I am simply enduring whole chunks of time throughout the year just to arrive at summer? I feel as if I am willing away my life." Clearly, she needed to find a way to cherish the gift of all her time, not merely the three months she didn't teach. How can we do something of the same, receive each day as a gift, and not rush through or feel we must simply endure precious portions of the only life we have?
Here is where spiritual practice can help us, by giving us the means to mark the days -- starting with these forty days of Lent. Spiritual practice needn't be a complex, time-consuming endeavor. It can be as simple as waking up and at some moment in those early hours pausing to give thanks. "This is the day the Lord has made," writes the psalmist, "let us be glad and rejoice in it." And at day's end, we might pause again, looking back on our experience. "How was your day?" we often ask one another in greeting. What if we plumbed that question a bit? How was your day? What good or hard things happened? What are you grateful for? What are you struggling with or what do you regret? Where did you meet God or feel touched by grace?
Another simple spiritual practice is to consider a question or struggle or dream that lives on the edges of our consciousness, the things we think about as we're drifting off to sleep, or worry about beneath the surface, or hope for, perhaps in secret. Whatever it is, we can simply devote a few minutes each day and bring it to the surface, considering the question, the struggle, or the dream, opening ourselves to God, and allowing ourselves, bit by bit, to live into its truth. This is what someone once called "back burner thinking," slow and steady, in the midst of doing other things.
I was making a pot of soup while writing these thoughts. I put the pot on early and added ingredients over time. For several hours all I did was get up periodically and stir the pot. While I was doing other things, the soup was still cooking. I wonder if the "slow cooking" of the important questions, struggles, or dreams we carry isn't like that, too. Eventually we will find clarity, or be shown a path, or experience forgiveness, but in the meantime, all we may need to do is stir the pot and let God work while we're doing other things.
My spiritual practice this Lent will be reclaiming the gift of time. I intend to begin each morning with a brief prayer of thanks, inspired by the practice of many African-American Christians to pray words like, "Thank you, God, for waking me up this morning, for putting shoes on my feet, clothes on my back, and food on my table. Thank you, God, for health and strength and the activities of my limbs. Thank you that I awoke in my right mind, mostly."3
Then in the evening, or at the end of the day, I intend to look back and reflect on where I found joy, where I struggled or experienced pain, where I met God, or was touched by grace. And, I intend to keep track of the questions of my heart, each day, in writing.
Let me end with a poem by the Sufi mystic, Rumi, which speaks powerfully of God's sense of time with and for us:
I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you to my heart.
I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had, and lift you like a prayer to the sky.
If no one else recognizes you, I do, because you are my heart and my soul.
Don't run away, accept your wounds, and let bravery be your shield.
It takes a thousand years for the perfect being to evolve.
Every step of the way I will walk with you and never leave you stranded.
Be patient; do not open the lid too soon.
Simmer away, until you are ready.4
____________
1. Quoted in Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, by Dorothy C. Bass (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000), p. viii.
2. Ibid, p. 2.
3. Ibid, p. 19.
4. Maryam Mafi, Rumi: Hidden Music (London: Thorsons, 2002), p. 147.
