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The
season of Lent seems so different from the other seasons in
the church
calendar. In itself, it has a specific purpose to be pursued and experienced
daily. Yet there are no special decorations in the streets or windows, no seasonal
greeting cards in the stores, not even a regular starting date fixed in our
calendars. In a way, Lent seems to sneak up on us and then to pounce when it's
least expected. And when it comes, it invites us - not just to the celebration
of a single Holy Day, but into a lengthy discipline of prayer and reflection,
giving us the opportunity to reflect on our lives and to correct the course
they may be taking. I don't know about you, but I need this opportunity, this
discipline. Every year I need it. In his book Listening to your Life,
Frederick Buechner has issued that same invitation in this way:
Listen
to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it
is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement
and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy
and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all
moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
 What
transforms this listening from self-indulgence
into holy listening is that we do it intentionally in the
presence
of God, that
we stop, look for God's presence in our lives and
listen for God's voice as it speaks to us in the events and
emotions of
our everyday living. For example, we can listen
through attentive reading of scripture or
books of devotion or poetry or even science, mathematics
or history. We can listen through prayer, through reflection
on
our hopes, our sorrows and anxieties, our loneliness
and relationships, our work and leisure. We can listen by
naming what we love
and what we fear, by opening up both the heights
and depths of our lives before the very heart of God. And
always, in all
these reflections, what we are really listening
for is nothing less than an awareness and assurance of the
presence of
God, who has been listening to us and now takes this invitation
of our attentiveness to respond. Again quoting Buechner:
(God's)
message is not written out in starlight .. rather it is
written out for each of us in the humdrum, helter-skelter
events of each day ... Who knows what he will say to me
today ... Not knowing is what makes today a holy mystery
as every day is a holy mystery.
Copyright ©2001
by The Rev. Margaret B. Gunness
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