Forty Days to Find Our Way (Not to Win)
Lessons on seasons from the muddy middle of Lent
A season of spring, the lengthening of days. “The English word Lent is a shortened form of the Old English word lencten, meaning ‘spring season’...and may possibly have reference to the lengthening of the days as characterizing the season of spring.”
Lent is a season. Seasons are time. Time is a gift.
Dull and duh, we know this. Tell us something new. Make Lent jazzy this year, make it sexy, make it easy to click and share. Buy this, try that, do more, do better faster harder longer. Win at Lent.
But we cannot change or control the calendar. Creation cycles, and creatures move through seasons. Far from passive, their time is potent. Light, temperature, and weather depend on seasons, shaping life within them.
Time remains one of the few things we cannot commodify. Despite our deepest longings, we cannot buy more time. We tend toward consumerist terms—spend, use, make, steal. But time is to be inhabited. We dwell within it.
Lent is not One More Thing To Do, not a race to win or an endurance regime. Instead, we are offered a slow, sacred season. A time to prepare for Easter. A time to pray, fast, and give alms. A time to return to God.
A season of bright sadness. “Lent is a period of grief that necessarily ends with a great celebration of Easter. Thus, it is known in Eastern Orthodox circles as the season of ‘bright sadness.’”
If Lent feels like Too Much or Enough Already or Haven’t We Been Living Lent for Two Years Long?
Remember this is a time of preparation, by definition imperfect and incomplete. We are on the way; we have not yet arrived.
Ponder the difference between punishment and penitence. One is forced and inflicted; the other is chosen conversion.
Receive the gift of a season: it brings change and beckons us to follow.
If Lent is time, you are already part of it. You exist within it. You do not have to earn your place. Lent is not an obstacle course or extra-credit for the Christian life. It is liturgical time, sacred and set apart.
Within this gift of a season, you will get the chance, each morning for six weeks, to wake within a Lenten world. To notice the lengthening of days. To pray and fast and give within this unrepeatable moment. To see how ancient practices, personal and communal, shape your awareness of time and its Creator.
A season of fasting, praying, and almsgiving. “Lent is a solemn religious observance in the Christian liturgical calendar commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert.”
Yes, Lent is a religious tradition, a spiritual practice, and a discipline of penitence. But it is time-specific and embedded, a communal commitment to live differently now. Outside of time, the same practices exist, yet here they hold particular gravitas.
Lent is a well-worn winter hat. You may not love to pull it out again, but it helps when the snow flies and the wind blows.
Lent is a hard but good run. You may have dragged your feet to get going, but once you hit the pavement, your heart and lungs thank you.
Lent is a long conversation with a soul friend. You feel the rare gift of being looked in the eyes and asked the hard questions, held in love.
Lent is not small talk or a marathon medal or fancy fashion. It does not boast; it does not put on airs. Lent bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Even if we fail, Lent never fails. The promise of this season carries us to Easter, which is new, every time.
Dictionary definitions come from the Wikipedia page on Lent, which is a curio cabinet well-worth poking around.
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