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Last week we passed the half way mark of Lent.
How has it been? Did you take up a practice adding or maybe abstaining from your usual routine? Are you taking a moment at the half way through Lent to consider how it was gone for you? I guess, this post is in part my half Lenten inventory.
A few weeks before Lent I did not have any plan in place for a Lenten practice. In truth, I hadn’t given it much thought, but then began to consider what I might do. It came to me to read Thomas Merton’s Thoughts in Solitude. I remember having read it in part many years ago, but don’t remember I ever read it cover to cover. That was going to be the goal this Lent.
I had not read many pages before Merton wrote of “wilderness.” As I encountered that word, it seemed I had the realization that this was the right reading for me during Lent. After all, other writers associated wilderness as a theme in Lent, maybe even an essential image of the Lenten experience. Maybe. And then on the first Sunday in Lent we do turn our attention to Jesus’ venturing into the wilderness.
Merton writes,
The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had not value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing … nothing to attract … nothing to exploit …. The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else. The desert is therefore the logical dwelling place for the man who seeks to be nothing but himself – that is to say, a creature solitary and poor and dependent upon no one but God with not great project standing between himself and his Creator.
How is that for one image of Lent – “… dependent upon no one but God …” Does this mean the Lenten practices could be secondary to the encounters we find. Maybe with God, maybe with the Tempter.
But wait, what could Merton mean by “no great project standing between himself and is Creator.”
Merton goes to suggest that in our time we enter the wilderness with a different agenda.
Man no longer needs God, and he can live in the desert on his own resources. He can build there his fantastic protected cities of withdrawal … The glittering towns that spring up overnight in the desert are no longer images of the City of God, coming down from heaven to enlighten the world … man and his money and machines move out into the desert and dwell there … believing in his promises of power and wealth … and wisdom …”
Merton invites me to consider when I am too concerned that I have the right Lenten practices and complete them in the right way, maybe I am trying to master the Lenten wilderness rather than allowing God to visit me there. Practice becomes more important than Encounter.
Or maybe I am carried away by Merton’s images. How do they strike you today?
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}
charles
NOTE: I last posted on this blog in October 2023. I was posting reflections on the International Sunday School Lessons until October 2024 on other pages here. What I have been engaged in as of late is more face-to-face encounters with the Christian community. I hope to return to regular posting here, but as of now, I not sure what “regular” will mean. All that aside, if you do not want to receive future posts from me, please contact me at charles@discipleswalk.org and I will remove your email from the recipient list. On the other hand, if you think someone might find posting similar to the above worth reading, please encourage them to contact me to be added to the recipient list. Thank you, and may your Lenten walk be Blessed.