PHOTO: Elizabeth van Balen Delphia – Bean Creek Funny how a piece of mail that arrived late could be just on time. Two weeks after the beginning of Lent, a one-page reflection on a program for the season appeared in my mailbox. Sent from the Benedictine Abbey in North Dakota, Assumption Abbey, it contained exactly what I needed to jump start my already waning efforts at keeping Lent. I had begun the season with a half-hearted intention to refrain from eating candy or desserts and a more sincere plan to regularly post Lenten blogs.
The candy and desserts fast was easily broken when I had dinner at a friend’s home and was served something sweet. Benedictine hospitality would see the dilemma and come down on the side of reverencing the host. Of course, after breaking the fast once, I could find lots of reasons, perhaps not so Benedictine, to indulge. There was the potluck at work to raise money for a summer food program for children. I had to taste a couple of the goodies. And then a coworker bought a Godiva raspberry filled dark chocolate bar and offered me a couple of squares. You get the picture.
I have been somewhat more successful with blog posts if I compare my success to the number of Advent posts, though they were so few that the victory is hollow. So what was my problem? Two weeks in, Lent was a bust and to be honest, I didn’t mind that much.
Then Brother Alban Petesch’s reflection was dropped in my mailbox. His suggestion that nurturing a sense of joy and gratitude is a Lenten practice hooked me , and I read on. He contrasted happiness and joy. Happiness , like ripples on the surface of a stream, can sparkle and shine, but comes and goes. Joy, on the other hand, is like the strong deep current that keeps the stream moving no matter what the surface shows.
Actually, I thought, the deep current CREATES the stream, doesn’t it? I mean, without that motion moving the water along you don’t have a stream. You have a pond or something else.
The image hit home. I have been struggling with happiness lately, or perhaps more accurately, with its fickle nature. I am fine, and then something happens (or doesn’t) and tears come and water the empty hole, amazingly heavy, that is lodged somewhere between my heart and my stomach. I say “water” because the thing seems to be growing.
That “deep down” current is what I am really longing for. It is God’s Presence within, no matter what is going on without. It is Spirit that creates me, like current makes the stream. I crave that Presence and not eating sweets isn’t helping.
Usually, the abiding sense of the Sacred, comes naturally to me. A gift, but not without cost. In her book, “Still,”Lauren Winner recalls a friend remarking on his wife’s similar natural receptiveness to God’s presence: “…to be naturally anything can make one not have to undergo the training necessary to make that which is immediate a habit” (102).
Lent is a time of training. Perhaps if I linked not eating a proffered delicacy with a prayer of gratitude, giving up sweets might help me feel the strong current pulling at my heart. Or maybe waking up each day and giving thanks, being present to those in my life and responding to their need rather than dwelling on my own would be enough. That’s a problem with happiness: It keeps one drowning in “self,” in past and future, abandoning the only reality – present.
I look at the amazing photograph my sister took one winter in Northwestern Ohio, and ponder these things. How many surface layers of that stream were frozen and caught on trees and plants along its bank? Over the winter months, the creek shrank, less water flowing, more given up to surface ice, going nowhere.
In the spring, the ice will melt and perhaps once again become part of the stream. Perhaps the solid pools of water will be sucked up by thirsty roots. Either way, Bean Creek keeps flowing. The deep down current does not die in winter. It courses on still, not visible perhaps, but keeping the waters alive.
In my winters, Presence abides, offering joy. Engendering hope. Calling forth gratitude. Happily, I still have four weeks of Lent to go!
Speak Your Mind