HAPPY LENT!

Lent has become my favorite season of the year; but not for the reasons you might think! I am not, for instance, a glutton for punishment, or discipline; and I ain't giving up chocolate for nobody! Often Lent is associated with these kinds of things, and it becomes a season of heaviness, of putting more 'to do's'--be they spiritual or otherwise--on one's plate. And, indeed, I used to look at Lent that way myself--in football terms, Lent was training camp--the brutal time of two-a-days that gets us ready for Easter.

I no longer look at Lent in this way. Lent, now, has become the season of 'laying the burden down' and living more lightly with life. The burden I attempt to lay down (and it is not easy) is not work but my own sense of importance, the self-judgements, the many standards that I have set for myself, and others, but which God has not laid down for me, ot for them. Lent, for me, is the season to enjoy living lightly as God's child rather than as the king of Randy World with all of the responsibility that that entails!

This year, we are encouraging ourselves to think of Lent differently: instead of 'giving something up' we are invited to 'take something on'--to do something to help someone and that will connect us more directly with the poor among us, in keeping with our study of the book A Hole in Our Gospel. At first, as I thought about this, it went against my Lenten grain, and I thought 'Training Camp', and said to myself, 'Well, if I am going to 'take on' something, then that is going to weigh me down, and it means I will need to give an additional something up beyond what I normally give up, so that my plate continues to be appropriately light for Lent.'

But the more I think about it, the more this 'taking on' something is right up the ol' Lenten alley.
For all we are really asked to 'take on', in the end, is our identity as the children of God, and to let all the other ways in which we have come to think about ourselves fall by the wayside. And one of the ways in which we live lightly and joyfully in this world as God's children is to be connected meaninfully with the poor. There will be crosses in the foyers of both campuses this Lent that will have on them opportunities to help others. Consider them as the clothes of the children of God; they are the clothes we were born to live in! I wish us each and all a light and happy Lent!

Randy