The Slow Way Newsletter: Becoming More Fully Alive To God
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Becoming More Fully Alive To God
The first time I ever practiced Lent was in 2003. I was 23 years old and a first year graduate student at Syracuse University. It was my first year ever living outside of Texas, and the people of the northeast fascinated me. Their humor and hardness and lack of gentle pleasantries! Never had the world been so cold. Never had the ground been so truly white and crunchy and hard as bone. Syracuse, New York was like living in a constant magical Nutcracker snow globe until we hit mid-January. And then it wasn’t. Then, the snow was brown until more snow fell on top of it and then that snow turned brown. Then the 8 am class I taught on Tuesday and Thursday mornings was an abomination to the reality that all mammals everywhere should hibernate when there’s 15 inches of snow on your car at 7:30.
I lived in a snow-globe that had turned to a brown ice-dungeon. And I was done being a Southern Baptist. One Sunday, I showed up at an Episcopal church and I fell in love. I loved the kneelers, and the white haired old ladies who invited me to Bible study, and the awkward hymn singing. I loved taking communion every Sunday and saying creeds and stumbling through the prayer book.
How did that happen? I wonder about it still. I had not planned to release the church of my childhood as soon as I moved to the east coast, but there was something about the isolation, the brand-new culture, the beauty of spending my days thinking about poetry with other poets. I was desperate for a faith that made room for silence and mystery and words.
Then Ash Wednesday showed up and I leaned my forehead toward the priest, unsure of the protocol for this sort of moment. What I didn’t expect was that my eyes would tear up when that pastor whose name I no longer remember told me I was going to die one day. But tear up they did, all the way, dripping.
I think that’s why I decided to practice Lent. Because the old ladies and the awkward kneeling made me alive in some new way. The fumbling, mumbling prayers touched a new center of my soul. And if the ashes on my head made me cry, then there must be something to this Lent idea.
I gave up coffee, because I was a rockstar. Never, ever, in the rest of my adult life, reader, have I given up coffee. And never do I want to do this again. I don’t want to grow my soul that much, you guys. I don’t want to find any sort of inner stillness in the place where my attachment to coffee lives. But, that year, I did.
I tell that story because I see that act of abstinence, that sacrifice of my morning brew, as one of the rare, true practices of fasting that has formed me. It wasn’t easy. It was a loss, particularly on those negative 10 degree mornings when I was brushing a foot of snow off my car, again. But my choice to step away from coffee for that season was one of the first moments of my faith where I chose to fast out of a true motive. I wasn’t trying to make God like me more. I wasn’t trying to please anyone else. I didn’t know the people at my church. I didn't really even’ know anyone who practiced giving something up for Lent. I didn’t think it really mattered to God because it had never been part of my preparation for Easter anyway. That Lent, my practice was entirely a step toward wanting to be transformed.
I’ve been thinking about that season in my life this week, almost an entire lifetime later. I’ve been a non-Baptist for as long as my childhood in the Baptist Church. Lent isn’t new to me anymore. The creeds and prayers I fumbled through twenty years ago are pressed as deep in the soil of my heart as the old country hymns I grew up singing in Meemaw’s dining room around the piano. Both things are true of me now: the Baptist girl and Liturgy woman.
And I don’t know that fasting during Lent works the same way for me anymore.
This week I said something on Instagram about how fasting doesn’t need to equal suffering. What I meant was that there is enough suffering already in our lives. Maybe that’s something a middle-aged woman says, something that my 23-year-old self couldn’t have said. Maybe that younger self needed a little self-inflicted lack in her life. But this 42-year-old? In the past ten years I’ve walked through a lost pregnancy, several terrifying diagnoses of my children, the death of a handful of beloved friends, the split of a church community I adored (caused by leadership decisions I had a hand in). I sat with my dad as he came to terms with his terminal illness and sat with him eleven months later when we ushered him to the end. And as I come to this first week of Lent at the tail-end of a pandemic, in a country divided into hardened edges, and watching an evil war catching flame before my eyes, I honestly can’t imagine choosing to suffer any extra bit right now.
Maybe you feel that way too? Now don’t hear me saying that suffering doesn’t cause growth. It sure does. And maybe suffering is the straightest path toward spiritual growth. But I don’t think we need to inflict external suffering on ourselves in order to grow. I am pretty sure I reject that idea completely.
That doesn’t mean I reject fasting during Lent. Letting go of coffee those 40 days when I was 23 lit my soul right up. I was living without my favorite warming drink in the darkest, coldest winter of my life. And I was doing it because I believed there was a God who could carry me through my basic urges and into a space beyond surface needs. As my friend and fellow writer Amy Julia Becker wrote this past week: “Lent is a time where we are invited to cut out surface desires so that we can access deeper desires.” In that sense Lent is never about suffering for suffering’s sake, but recognizing our surface desires, and paying attention to what those reveal about the deeper desires underneath.
When I was first becoming intrigued with monastic thought and life a decade ago, I read a book called Hearts On Fire: Praying With Jesuits. I don’t remember much from that book, but I wrote in Found about a monk who quoted that book when he described moments of grace, moments of encountering the Divine, as becoming “more fully alive to God.” I love that idea. That we are the ones who get to awaken to the reality of God behind and before and beside us. That somehow in the paying attention, in the work of recognizing the joy and beauty and gratitude of our lives – despite the suffering – we become more alive to the presence of God.
That’s what fasting is for. It’s not for suffering so we can learn. Life will hand out enough suffering on its own. It’s not for changing our bad habits or controlling our bodies. It’s the work of waking up, and removing the things that keep us asleep to the beauty and goodness of God in the world.
That’s my prayer for us as we move through this season of Lent, not that we will somehow get control of our destructive habits through some form of self-denial. But that we will shake off the blindfolds so we can come closer to the Really Real. That come Easter we’ll look at ourselves and see that we are more fully alive somehow, more fully awake to the sacred at work in the world.
a slow practice
What are you doing this Lenten season to allow yourself room to become more fully alive to God? If you haven’t made any sort of commitment, or taken any step toward a Lenten practice, maybe this is a moment to consider one small step you might take this season to wake up to the Really Real.
My Lenten practice this year is simple. I’m committing to spend an hour every Wednesday walking with my dog on the trails in the nearby national park. Here’s why it’s a good choice for me. It’s a task that doesn’t check any boxes for me but joy. It’s not the kind of workout that changes my body, or that makes me feel like I’ve burned a proper amount of calories or strengthened my core. None of that. It’s just beautiful, and it brings me joy. I love being with my dog, and I love seeing him chase chipmunks. Also, I’ve committed to keeping the podcasts turned off while I’m walking so I can listen to the creatures and the trees and the crunching cold leaves. Am I going without something? Yep. I’m letting go of that hour of work and productivity (which is always hard for me). Also, I’m letting go of the distraction of ideas and entertainment. Listening to podcasts isn’t a bad habit I need to change. I love podcasts and I think they help me be more informed and thoughtful about the world. But sometimes, they keep me from listening all the way down to myself and to God. This simple practice is a reminder that I don’t need to always produce, or learn, or be entertained. It’s also a reminder that silence is healing.
That’s what I mean when I say your Lenten practice can be rooted in your own joy. Becoming more fully alive to God.
Let’s take a few minutes to ask ourselves some questions:
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
What is one small thing in your life that brings you inefficient joy? (You don’t accomplish anything by doing it, because the goodness is found in the doing it, not in what it produces.) Maybe you love to play an instrument or sing. Maybe you love to dance. Maybe you love to run. Or craft. Or needlepoint! Or cook meals that dirty every pan in the entire kitchen! Maybe you find joy in time with friends. Or reading a great detective novel.
Can you sit quietly for a minute and name the thing that brings you joy?
Now, I want you to consider what that joy says about your deeper desires. What do you love about that thing? What is it about playing the piano that makes you feel alive?
Sit quietly with that question.
And, now, last question. Where is God in that feeling? Is God somewhere near that feeling? Or is God doing something with that feeling? Have you invited God into that feeling?
Sit quietly with those questions as well.
As we close, can you consider how you might lean into your delight this Lent? How might leaning into joy reveal something new about God, your deeper desires, and even the false desires that keeping you from coming fully alive to God?
Take some time to sit with these questions and your responses.