Yesterday Mother Nature gave us a perfect Mardi Gras landscape on Kents Hill. Every limb twisting toward the sparkling sunlight was hung with rainbow-tossing crystal beads in a glorious parade down the streets and over the hills. The light danced.Revelers wandered foolishly about in shirt sleeves despite nose nipping temperatures. Even the rice-crispy sound (thanks for the phrase, neighbor, Babs!) of rattling trees added to the festive mood. Steam rising off melting tarmac added a sense of mystery.
Everything about the day seemed to cry, "shake it, Baby, shake it."
But today the air has been graying toward the evening's Ash Wednesday Service. It doesn't feel like penance for yesterday's celebration....more like a rebalancing of energy as the next storm approaches. Its tempting to push the metaphor too far, into a natural cycle of life. But there's nothing natural about Ash Wednesday, at least not these days.In days gone by, Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday, was the day when everyone scraped together the last bits of fat and feasted as best they could before the long final fast that awaited early crops and hunting. After the feast, as reality set in, people would go to church to be "shriven" of their sins, to confess and cleanse their souls. Today, I went to the store to stock up before rain sets in again. Instead of going to confession to cleanse my soul, I'll brush my teeth before I go to bed. Its quite a reversal of fortune from what my scandinavian ancestors knew.
Two of the practices lost in Protestantism's hey day are confession and fasting. If you don't have to, why put yourself through it? Party on!
So how do we get in touch with the reality of life's storms and our complicity in so many of them? Can we really just skip over the depris piling up around us, perhaps arranging it artfully or ignoring it altogether: hurt feelings that lead to lost partnerships, missed oportunities to be the hands and heart of Christ for a stranger, the gluttony of daily coffee intake, chocolate tea, out of season fruits and vegetables trucked miles and miles and miles while we bemoan the price of gas and ignore the toll on underpaid farmhands.Will it really all go away if we just ignore it? Or might we accept the moments of clarity offered by a Lenten Fast, setting aside non-essentials while what is vital emerges: our fears, our addictions, our hubris, all the accrued debris in our souls that Jesus offeres to sweep out and replace with space for grace.
