Coming Clean

Lenten Lament

So, the whole goal of Lent is to, in part, suffer with Jesus. Suffer as He spent 40 days in the desert with Satan tempting Him. Suffer as He made His way to the Cross. And the way we do that is through prayer/reflection/meditation, fast, and alms giving.

Well, let it be known that (1) I am no good at all of the above (but, hey, there’s got to be some virtue of trying to make a good run at it) and (2) I am really no good at suffering.

Looking back over my Lent, I can see the stuff I gave up for my fast really didn’t matter, and the things that did matter, that were real opportunities to suffer and learn virtue, passed me by without me noticing much at the time.

What I have come to see as my real Lenten Cross for the past 8 weeks didn’t take the shape of abstaining from material or passtime. It didn’t involve me trying to be positive for myself. It involved, simply, (1) me trying to do the right thing – which I think, to some degree, I by and large did and (2) being content with the outcome, whatever that might be. Point 2, here, is where I failed, miserably.

My Lent would be kinda like Jesus, coming down from Heaven, growing up with all the crap the rest of us put up with and don’t deal with so gracefully, preaching the Good News, performing miracles, raising people from the dead, and then start whining before the Sanhedrin that they want to put Him up on the Cross. What an odd turn of a story that would have made. “Look, I’ve done everything by the Book. I’ve done everything in everyone’s best interest. But you’re just too stubborn and too proud to listen to me, to trust me, take my advice, and let me take the lead here. Well, poo on you! This is just stupid. Why couldn’t Father have given me another Sanhedrin??!!”

Yeah, that’s kinda what my Lent was like: getting up to the point where it’s going to matter most and falling to pieces. Worse yet, I was so bitter with what happened to me, that I began to conspire with others to bring down what I saw as my enemy. So, that’d be like Jesus orchestrating with the disciples a coup to take over the Sanhedrin.

Thing is, I’m still not out of the desert yet. Perhaps this is the sign I’ve been kind of expecting to tell me to move on. Find something else. I dunno. There’s a few more things I probably should let happen first.

On another note, much to my dismay, I’m putting off applying for the Diaconate for another year. Lisa has, with some good reason, become uncomfortable with the notion of our home life having to become compatible with the time formation will take let alone the time that Ministry would require. So, we’re going to try to apply next year, and hopefully by then we’ll be read such that she’ll be comfortable moving forward. If I don’t have her support, I know I will fail.

So here I am, back in blog land. Not a stellar return, but then, I don’t have much time lately, so this will have to do.

On some upbeat notes, Josh has taken to singing his prayers. It’s kinda cool. Tonight, we sang the Our Father together – that was very cool. William has graduated from commando crawling to crawling on all fours and has become very baby-chatty — which is very, very cute. Godparents, you should come and see your young babbling babe.