“What if we view this desert of Lent as not just a time to reflect or to lament, or to confess or to fast, but a time where we learn to be free?” – Megan Westra

Cari*, my seventh-grade friend, was from a big and big-hearted Catholic family. She ate fish on Fridays and “gave up something for Lent.” Weird, I thought. Too bad she isn't a Christian. We don’t have to follow all those rules. (Ours were normal rules like “girls don’t wear pants or cut their hair” and “no watching Bonanza on Sunday nights”…) Later my friend, Diane*, also Catholic, did the same. Neither explained to my satisfaction the why behind the practice, so I dismissed it as an archaic custom for the uninitiated. (Click here for more on Lent.)

Curiosity about the origins and beauty of Christian traditions beyond my own, found me in the second half of life. I could hear Paul (Ephesians 4) telling me that the church in the world is Christ’s “body” not our brilliant enterprise, that each has something to contribute and much to learn from one another about what it means to experience the life of God--for ourselves and for the sake of others. I listened—mostly.

Ah, February, the month we celebrate love. Valentine’s Day comes with so many expectations. Or maybe none, if we are protecting ourselves from disappointment or a rejection of a “manmade artifice”. It may even come with no thought of it at all, until we walk into a store showering us with ploys to buy hearts filled with chocolate or the perfect card professing our love. Or during a pandemic, the on-line site inviting us to buy, buy, buy; so that our loved one feels loved.

I have been slowly savoring The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty, a beautiful book by German author and luthier, Martin Schleske. Schleske shares stories from his life as a violin maker — a luthier — making deep connections to the spiritual life. He tells of the adventures he and generations of luthiers have had finding their own “singing trees” — trees that luthiers know have the best wood for making violins.

”The heart of a violin maker comes to life when he searches, with all his senses attuned, for the wood for his own violins”, says Schleske.

He describes the posture needed on your search as, “the Law of Grace, which says: you are powerless to create the essential things, you can only receive them. But you can make yourself receptive.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” - Luke 2:13-14

This year, it may seem particularly difficult to find joy. So much of what we have come to expect from the season looks different this year. Family traditions are frayed; in some cases, this holiday season is unrecognizable from what it has “always" been.

Yet the angels still sing! Joy isn’t dependent upon happy feelings. Joy lives deep in our hearts and can be present whether we feel happy or sad. Joy is a Fruit of the Spirit, given by the Holy Spirit as we lean into relationship with God.

The U.S. presidential election is imminent. If there is anything that reminds us we are ultimately not in charge of outcomes, it is world events. Thus, we continue to experience higher than normal levels of physical, socio-political and economic uncertainty. The prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray can help us become individuals who rest in the love of God in uncertain times. It can help us become people who express God’s love when we find ourselves at odds with those who hold perspectives different from our own.

Gal 4:19 - “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you…”

If there is a gift in this time of pandemic, it is a renewed awareness of time - a recalibrating of our communal pace. Recent societal evolution has resulted in soul-ravaging cultural norms intolerant of anything less than instantaneous. My granddaughter followed me toward town recently, then passed me with a wave. I was later chided with a wink for taking a few seconds too long to reach highway speed. We live in a hurry.

I love Holy Saturday. What am I writing about? Holy Saturday? Holy Saturday is the day between Good Friday and Eastern morning, and I love that day. Why in the world am I thinking about Passion Week when it is already the month of September? Let me tell you.

I was recently camping on Whidbey Island in a place that sits on a high bluff overlooking Admiralty Inlet where the Pacific Ocean comes in to form our beautiful Puget Sound. Sitting on a bench, looking out over this magnificent vista one morning, I began to be aware of all of the sounds around me that I had not been paying attention to. One by one they began to break in on my own awareness as I set my ears to intentional listening.

Psalm 61:1-3: “Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; for you are my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy.” Jesus basically calls us to do what we don’t want to do, which is to empty ourselves of our perspective and take on God’s.

In this season of slowness, of uncertainty, pain, and anxiety, God has been pressing on my heart how something so simple as breathing – something most of us don’t even have to think about – is so essential to life.