March 7, 2010

Today is the 3^rd Sunday of Lent - day 19 out of 40; we are just shy of halfway! How is that Lenten discipline going for you? We talked about how a new habit can be formed in 21 days. How is that new habit? Are you embracing the changes that you are experiencing in your routine? Are you finding the journey long and tedious? Or, maybe you haven't yet decided how to observe Lent! It's not too late. You still have 21 days to go before Easter Sunday! There is truly an art to picking your Lenten observance or discipline. One time a friend of mine said, "Well, I'm never doing that again!! That was way too hard and I couldn't wait to get it over with!" I can't recall what she gave up that year but she was clearly agitated and I think her discipline consumed her for the entire 40 days!!!

There is an art to picking your Lenten observance.

I have invited all of you to let me know what you are doing and I have posted your observances on the bulletin board in the hallway near the chapel. I hope you will go and read them on your way to coffee hour; I also hope you will let me know what you are doing so that I can post yours so that others can be inspired by your practices. I hope that whatever you chose to do is finding its way into your life gracious.

I have shared with some of you that one of my disciplines is to read a poem every day. I have mostly done that and I have loved the poems I have read. I have a collection of poems selected by Garrison Keillor in a book entitled Good Poems for Hard Times. He has an eye for a good poem and I must confess that this hardly seems like a burden for 40 days to read beautiful words. I have learned to select my Lenten discipline with care!!!

Garrison Keillor writes in his introduction about poetry, "The meaning of poetry is to give courage. A poem is not a puzzle that you the dutiful reader are obliged to solve, it is meant to poke you, get you to buck up, pay attention, rise and shine, look alive, get a grip, get the picture, pull up your socks, wake up and die right. Poets have many motives for writing (to be published? to flaunt your sensitive nature? to win a valuable prize? and maybe a year in Rome or Provence?) but what really matters about poetry and what distinguishes poets from, say, fashion models or ad salesmen is the miracle of incantation in rendering the gravity and grace and beauty of the ordinary world and thereby lending courage to strangers. This is a necessary thing. At times life becomes almost impossible? But it can help to say words." (Keillor, p. xvii)

There is an art to picking your Lenten observance.

I don't know why I decided to read a poem daily for Lent. My friend Ellen always sends me a poem in early April and reminds me that it is National Poetry month. I always forget to observe it!!! So this year I remembered early, and put it first as my Lenten observance. Sometimes the poems are light and feathery and make me smile. Other times they are heavy and dark and I shudder at the depth of emotion. Reading thoughtful words makes my mind alert to the poetry in life around me.

I cannot think of a more mundane task than going to the DMV and registering my car each year. I have an AAA membership for two reasons - to get the maps and tour books and to pay my registration. I did that this month for my car. It was on my list to do and I stood in line and waited for my turn. The woman who waited on me was pleasant and chatty. I made small talk with her while she pulled up my file. I jokingly said that I needed to get new tags so when my son got pulled over for the speeding ticket he wouldn't get a second ticket for late registration. She smiled and shared that she too had a teenage son and she told me a quick story about him. In that short story she mentioned that her husband had died this past year. She casually inserted it into her story but it loomed large to me. I asked her how he died. She explained that he had a brain-stem aneurism - no warning; he was an athlete who ran marathons and was in fabulous shape but one day he just had the aneurism and he was in a coma for a week. At this point she paused and apologized for talking about such a personal thing in the AAA line while I was purchasing my car registration. I told her that it didn't bother me and I was interested in hearing about it. She went on to say that he was in a coma for a week and during that week she had to decide about whether or not to continue life support. They finally decided that they would not continue to keep him alive and removed him from the life support; her older teenage son and she went in the room for a final time with their dad and husband. A male nurse was with them and she said her son was having a really hard time letting his father go. The male nurse, gently apologizing for intruding, said to the son, "I don't usually intrude on a time with families, but I just want you to know that there are far worse things than death." The woman at AAA said it was exactly what they needed to hear. His words lifted the heaviness from both of their shoulders and they were able to say their goodbyes to their husband and father, who died within a few day. She and I both observed how wonderful if was that this man knew his calling to be a nurse for families in crisis. His words soothed them.

I thanked her for the story, took my receipt and stumbled out into the sunshine. Who says you can't have a religious experience at AAA.

Our text today in Isaiah says, "Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in fatness. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live?" (Isaiah 55:1-6)

Our God has placed beauty and fatness, abundance and grace all around us. It can be found in a hospital room as a loved one is dying, at AAA, through poetry and even at the DMV I suspect. We have to notice it and receive it.

If your Lenten discipline is drudgery, change what you are doing or change the way you are doing it. The 40 days of Lent are meant to give us a new relationship to ourselves and to our God that we might be different people as a result. There is an art to picking your Lenten observance. Amen.