Lent: Let’s try this again

It’s been a year now since we began the Lent that seemed to never end. All the forces of the world out there seemed to work against a holy and meaningful Lent. And then, Easter came and we were locked out of the churches, kept separate from one another. What is so interesting to me is how that unusual Lent propelled so many people deeper into the practices that pull us away from what we want in Lent. What a party the devil had in the depths of our despair. 

With Lent we want to grow in humility, to grow to be more Christlike. Lent is an invitation to love more like Jesus loves. When it works well, Lent moves us into a more authentic life with one another. Last year pulled us apart. When it works well, Lent makes us more humble, more oriented toward serving. Last Lent encouraged much navel-gazing as we sat in our own safe spaces, isolated from one another, clicking away and spiraling into the clutches of acedia. 

Let’s try again. Let’s offer ourselves to one another this time. It’s been a year of living within the constraints of safety. We know how to be creative now. Let’s find a way to step outside the comfort zone. Lent grows us when we are teachable. Communion with one another profits our souls when we begin to understand that we are called to relate to one another on the other’s terms. We cannot judge everything from our own perspective, cannot expect that we are gods in our own kingdoms. Lent asks us into genuine communion with both God and neighbor.

So we choose our offerings — looking not to a refresh of new year’s resolutions, but listening intently to what God calls us to do. We give up our ideas of control and surrender instead. "What to give up for Lent" is undertaken in such a way to correct disordered consumption. Any and all disordered consumption — whether food or Netflix or clutter — is selfish and without regard to others, oblivious to the fact that what is being consumed was a gift of God first. Adam and Eve sinned by eating apart from God. They forgot that the blessing of food flows from him. They thought food would make them gods of their own lives. They thought it would give them the keys to unlock all knowledge and put them firmly in control. They made food into an idol that would elevate their own selfish interests.

Lent is our season to set the idols aside, whatever they may be. It’s our opportunity to recognize the ways that God has given us good gifts and to ask ourselves how to use those gifts for his glory. And then to do it. When we recognize in all humility that what we have is a gift, then we can offer in all humility those gifts to another. And Lent becomes about love. 

We die to all the ways we make ourselves into little gods and our desires into idols. We die to the deceptions of our own tightly held and jealously guarded plans and awaken in a world that stretches far beyond our narrow short-sightedness. We die to our fears and rise with a renewed trust in the resurrection.

Winter walks

It is my first winter in the Northeast. Here, snow falls upon fallen snow. Great mounds are piled in parking lots and driveway margins, and one wonders if they will melt before April. I’ve been outside quite a lot, actually. Though I have neglected to buy drapes or rugs for our new house, we are all fully outfitted in appropriate attire for comfortably spending hours outdoors even in February. 

For this, I am very grateful. I am also sure it has saved my sanity. 

The sky is nearly always gray. I’m not outdoors seeking sunshine. And clearly, I’m not seeking warmth. I think, instead, I’m seeking what is real. The outdoors is the place least touched by the pandemic. When I am there, all feels normal, save for a few people wearing masks to snowshoe. Even in those cases, a mask is just as often a winter face covering. 

Indoors, our friendships are virtual and flat and take on the weird glow of screens. Very few people cross the threshold. With the exception of my son and daughter-in-law’s, I have not seen the inside of another person’s home since I got here seven months ago. We have — very carefully — invited people into our house. Mostly, they have accepted. But other people’s homes remain closed tightly. 

Outside, when we see people, it’s fine to stop and say hello. Perhaps we’ll watch our dogs play together or stand at the top of the hill and compare notes on puppies. Fleeting encounters give way to promises to reconnect when life is normal again, and then I’m off to walk in silence. And there in the cold and the snow, the silence is welcome. Away from the flat, glow-y conversations inside screens, away from the artificial light that tries to be cozy and misses, away from the places where handshakes and hugs are anathema, the outdoors is crisp and alive and open and beautiful and just the same as it once was. It is also quiet. 

There is no feeling in the outdoors that I am missing out, no sense that a vital piece of human living is missing. There is only the peace that comes with feeling fully alive. Heaven meets earth outside, and prayer unfurls across great expanses of snowy countryside. God takes my hand and together we trod clumsy, crunchy steps, shivering as the snow slips over the tops of boots, delighting in the puppy bounding ahead. In the quiet of the outdoors, I have the companionship of the Almighty. I don’t feel as if I’m missing out. I don’t feel small or unimportant or forgotten. I feel awake and awash in the wonder of his majestic artistry.

The puppy, now a leggy adolescent with abundant energy, requires a good walk at least three times a day, preferably four or five. And so we go — for 30 minutes or an hour at a time, we walk. And I pray. Like a good monk, I am called into his presence and I go. Our walks are brisk, but unhurried. My mind is awake and alert. I outline book chapters. I draft letters inside my head. I let ideas take root and flower. I examine my conscience and repent and resolve to do better. 

Mostly, I give thanks. 

For fresh air. For beautiful landscapes. For quiet conversations with the Creator.

For the chance to feel as if all is right with the world.

Rethinking rest

What if we have it all backward? What if rest isn’t so much about what we do when we sink into bed exhausted at the end of a busy day as it is about a quiet moment in the hush of the morning? Often, we persuade ourselves that we are tired and we aren’t resting well because we’re so busy serving — working for our families, caring for our children, tending our gardens, keeping our homes. In truth, we are tired because we forget we are to work as unto the Lord, and instead, we work as if we think we’re the Lord. 

We ignore the value of rest because we think we are the ones who keep the world spinning. We think we can’t rest, because if we do, the world (or at least the corner of it under our care) will fall apart. We’re tired. The whole country is tired. The whole world is tired. Let’s flip it on its end. Let’s stop thinking of rest as the rare reward at the end of a long day, and let’s think about it as the thing we do first. Think of rest in terms of surrender. Rest in Christ at the beginning of the day instead of crashing into exhaustion at the end of the day.

Relinquish the illusion that you are powerful to the reality that it is God who is truly powerful. So often, we work ourselves to the point of exhaustion because we are afraid. We might not recognize it in the moment, but we’re scared that if we stop striving, we and the people we love will stop thriving. But really? God loves them more than we do. If we surrender them to God, if we ask his help, if we consecrate the entire day to him, we don’t have to be afraid. Surrender recognizes that we do nothing well under our own power. Everything good that we do or say or accomplish, we do under his strength and by his grace. There is no other way.

When we surrender the day to God before it’s even begun, we can meet fear and stare it down. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to finish everything on the list. We don’t have to run ourselves ragged. The enemy keeps telling us we can be omnipotent as he’s urging us to run harder and faster. Rest comes when we recognize that we cannot. We’re not all-powerful. We won’t be perfect. The perfectionism that is the precursor to exhaustion is striving to be without fault in our own eyes and in the eyes of other people because we need to feel secure. It’s trying to control our children’s lives so that only good and nothing bad will happen (as if we could). It’s trying to maintain perfect order because we fear what will happen if we allow for human weakness. And it’s exhausting. 

Perfectionism is the enemy of surrender. Perfect fear and the fear of being imperfect drive out love. Perfect fear depletes, frustrates, depresses and suffocates a life of grace. It is grace we want to live, not perfection. 

It is surrender we need, not power.

There is true rest in the surrender.

A new calendar

If ever there was a time the whole world was ready for a new year, this is it. Collectively, we replace the old calendar with a new one and exhale a sigh of relief. Just a small one. We inhale hope. But it’s a guarded breath. No one really believes that changing the date from 2020 to 2021 will right all that’s wrong. No one really believes that hope springs from the crisp page of a new year yet uncluttered with the jottings of our days. Everyone agrees we are a weary world in need of a fresh infusion of hope. 

We hope to leave behind the anguish and the anxiety of the previous year. We hope to heal. We hope to be restored. We hope to repair the broken. We hope to renew the relationships. We hope to rest. And we can. But not by changing the date. I know this for sure.

I had a bad year in 1990. It wasn’t a whole-world experience — just my whole world. It started in March and "ended" just as the year did. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. Objectively speaking, it was a year of suffering. And even though the treatment ended just as the year did, suffering did not end when the date changed. So 1991 came and I met it, still without hair, still unable to swallow, still fearing the worst, forever changed and more than a little bit broken. There was no magical cure in breaking the shrink wrap on a new calendar.

But it sure was nice to close the covers on the old one for the final time. I learned a lot about that old calendar in the year that followed. I learned that I could drag it with me through the new year. I could pack it in every suitcase, take it to every follow-up appointment, revisit it in every uncertainty, ruminate, and lament unceasingly. 

Or I could move on, transformed by every struggle logged in those pages.

The truth is, the last 30 years have been a journey of both kinds — lugging that old year with me and leaping without its weight. As time goes on, I know the value of leaping. I am beyond grateful for the lessons suffering taught me (though I’d prefer never to learn them that way again, please God). But the most precious lesson of all might have been the one that taught me not to hold it tightly. To let it go.

See the way it transformed you. Notice how the mystery unfolded in his faithfulness. Acknowledge the redemption. But don’t relive the suffering every time you remember it. Instead, take up the transformation and lean hard into living. Really living.

Open the new calendar and fill it with meaning. Truth be told, this month is just as much a mystery as last month was. And truly, 2019 was just as much a mystery as 2020. We never know what will happen when we open to a new page. We want to plan. We want to have mastery over the way the days will be filled. Instead we have mystery. Those who have suffered know mystery. And now we’ve all suffered. We know surrender is necessary to live well. Surrender is how we fully live in the mystery. Hopefully, in 2020, we all learned surrender’s lesson together. 

We do not know — we cannot know — the ways we will be challenged, the ways we will grow. But if we are to bring the transformation to the new year that we hoped for in the old, we have to know the one who suffered with us. We have to see the ways he carried the crosses with us. We have to understand that transformation begins with compassion, and compassion literally means to suffer with. We are in the mystery together. We have to embrace cradle and cross, ruin and redemption. We have to surrender to mystery with trust and with awe. And we have to live with gratitude and with genuine hope, the way one lives when one knows exactly the treasure that is the gift of an ordinary, hope-filled, mystery of a day.

Now What?

I wrote this column over a week ago and sent it to my editor at the Arlington Catholic Herald early on the morning of Wednesday August 15, the day after the Pennsylvania Attorney General's report. Yesterday, I got word that the Herald will not print it.

I am passionate about this topic. I believe that victims deserve to have their voices heard. And I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that our churches should be sanctuaries for the most vulnerable among us. Until any victim of abuse can feel safe in any Catholic church, we have not adequately cleaned up this mess. Please help me to help them be heard. It is discouraging to be denied my usual platform, but we have the Internet, right? And I have you. I'm so grateful. Please read this, and then pass it on.

These columns are due a week before they are published. When I want to respond to a current event, that’s always a little tricky. What will change as the story unfolds in the next week? Will the content even be relevant by then? This time, I intended to write before the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report was published. I knew—or I thought I knew—that the report was to be devastating, and I wanted one last reflection before the world of the Catholic Church in America tilted on its axis. But I was traveling with my daughter early last week and time was elusive, and instead I sat on the floor of New York City hotel room on the morning of August 15, after having spent a good bit of the previous night reading the report, trying to make sense of it all.

My reality is that I’ve known for more than ten years how a report of the abuse of power and sexual misconduct is handled when a victim comes forward. That hard won knowledge has haunted me. The grand jury report is extensive and it is graphic. To read it is to challenge one’s faith in the Church. There is no way around it. For some people, the interior struggle over whether to stay in the Church or leave in disgust will be quickly resolved. They will reflect on the Eucharist, reason that they cannot live without it, and they will press on with whatever part they can play in needed reform. Or, they will decide that this cannot possibly be a place where a healthy soul can grow, and they will leave in disgust and horror, with no small amount of sorrow. 

For others, they will toss and turn and wonder about the two thousand years since Christ promised Peter that he would build his Church upon the rock. They will remember that the Magisterium is true—that the teaching authority of the Church is just as sane and solid as it has been throughout the ages. But doubt will creep in. If the bishops of our time and place can be so complicit in such grievous sin, can bishops be trusted at all? If popes can let such networks of evil grow and become ever more entangled around all of us until they threaten to choke our very beings can they possibly be as prudent and wise as we want to believe they are in matters of faith and morals? They will not easily reconcile all the many doubts and fears and hopes and hurts. They will be tormented by the disparity between the true and the beautiful and the pure evil in the grand jury report. It’s not disloyal to lie awake wondering. It’s normal.

Please consider another group. If you are a person who has ever suffered abuse, if you are a Catholic who is a victim—either of the clergy or of any other sexual predator—this report takes on a new dimension entirely. Church is supposed to be a refuge. It is the safe place where one goes to heal. It is the balm that soothes the injuries of trauma—the embodiment of the promise that God knows and sees and he is faithful even when the whole world seems dangerous and threatening. But if in that very church, evil has been harbored and protected, where do the those seeking refuge go?

Trauma changes everything. Trauma demands the competent binding of wounds over time. Trauma wants wise, healthy spiritual guidance, and it will not easily trust a priest, not now, despite rationally knowing that most priests are good, holy men. Trauma means that the victim needs church to be safe and strong and reliable. The Pennsylvania report means that it is none of those for anyone who has ever been traumatized.  These are the most fragile among us. They need us. 

It is time to make the Church safe for victims. If it is safe for the victims, it will be healthy for all of us. It is time for those who choose to remain to commit to eradicating the rot, so that our churches are strong, stable places of refuge. It is time for us to understand that we sit in the pews with souls who have been grievously injured, and that that makes us all victims. 

The Church is the Bride of Christ. She is a victim. She has suffered horribly at the hands of evil men. There are early reports that she cannot survive the chronic assault and the grievous injuries she’s suffered over time. We are in agony as we witness her pain. But will we leave, or will we find the strength to stay? Can we kneel by her side in fervent prayer in her moments of suffering, knowing that a long convalescence is inevitable? Can we rise to our feet and remind one another of Christ’s call to be the church and so to be a part of reform, knowing  that much will be demanded of us to rid her of disease? Can we turn to the Eucharist, the source and summit of our lives, and draw enough strength to be a person who heals the church? Or will we walk away and leave her to die alone?