Intentions for Lent

Inconsistent describes my Lenten practices over the years. I've done my share of giving up coffee, sweets, and baked goods. There have been efforts to do something differently--pray at a regular time, read through a part of scripture. But inconsistency always accompanies intention.

Over the past three weeks I've rolled around ideas about what to do, what to give up, what to take on for Lent. I wanted to be able to follow through, all the way through Lent to Easter with the practice. Nothing bubbled up. I tossed around all the usuals for the past three weeks, but nothing stood up and demanded, "Here is your Lenten practice this year."

Then a word. Intention. It's one of the themes threading through my experiences, learning, and practices over the last 18 months.

On Ash Wednesday I sat in the quiet of the early morning hours to pray and write, read and listen. I repeated the question that had plagued the previous three weeks."What should I do for Lent?"

"Intention," came the reply. "Do today with intention. And do intention one day at a time."

Such brief instruction, but direct and significant. And it made sense.

That morning I made a dietary choice for the day. I committed to ask forgiveness for a deep wound I caused years ago.

Psalm 37, one of yesterday's readings, admonishes, "Do not fret...Be still before the Lord." So my intention for Day 2: Put aside fretting (which looks like frustration, occasional irritation, and judgment on me). I also made a dietary decision for the day.

Today, Day 3 and another set of intentions: Take a next step in my forgiveness work and respond to someone whom I would prefer to ignore. There was another dietary decision.

Where will this practice of intention lead? I don't know, and it really doesn't matter. Not now. What does matter is this day, and that I stay true to today's intentions.

Ash Wednesday, 2015

The beginning of Lent. This evening at church, Holy Eucharist with the Imposition of Ashes. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The priest smudges a black cruciform onto each of our foreheads. We speak words of penitence and list our shortcomings.

We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven. 

We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. 

We confess all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives; Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people; our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves;...

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty; for all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,... 

The list goes on. The sins are many. Our faults too heavy to bear on our own. The list is enough to put us under. So we say the words together, shoring each other up, acknowledging our shared guilt and our shared hope. We are a gathering of the trying-to-be-faithful on this day that marks the open door to grace.

I am reminded of the seal at baptism. The priest makes the sign of the cross with oil on the forehead of the newly baptized,  and claims, "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own forever. Amen."

Yes, we fail. We sin and we hurt each other. We even do unspeakable things. But God, in Her and His boundless mercy, loves us and pours out grace and mercy upon us.

Thanks be to God.