Giving up Drab for Lent

If you had a chance to read my previous post about Lent, you may recall that I value Lenten fasts as a praxis to open us to the Divine rather than a form of penance. The answer to my question What should I give up for Lent? was consistent with wisdom that has come to me in the past. This very fact did not sit well with me. I like unique things, so I resisted it at first. A more receptive part reasoned that sometimes repetition provides a theme revealing who you are and what you have to offer. Aren’t these the big questions with which Religion deals? I decided to follow up.

So I’m giving up drab for Lent. More precisely, I’m committed to find and share ‘beauty’ for the next forty days. I didn’t hear this answer as an audible voice like the mystic or mentally ill might experience, but it was an idea that wouldn’t let me go though I squirmed. My resistance came from the fact that I am in a church that cares about justice and beauty is not food for the poor, rights for the indigenous, care for the earth, safety for the minority, health care for the elderly…you get the point.

However, I didn’t dig my heels in too long for this is an old argument. The practical and the artist within me have had this debate before. I recalled a post a seminary classmate made in response to my sharing about a creative writing class I offered to homeless women in Seattle as part of my practicum in writing as ministry. He wondered if my classes were small because creative writing was too high on Maslow’s pyramid of needs. These women didn’t need “self-actualization” at the top of the pyramid; they needed their basic needs for food, housing, and safety met. The practical side of me agreed, but the artist held out. I could only agree to a point.

Learning to see the beauty and meaningfulness of our daily life is a profound avenue to our health and sense of abundance; it provides resilience. I love the prose poem , A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert included in Roger Housden’s anthology, Dancing with Joy. Gilbert knows there is sorrow everywhere but sees the need to risk delight. I sit up straighter reading his lines, “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.” For me beauty leads to joy despite the existence of the despair that haunts many in our current political state of affairs.

Here and now, I’m declaring my intention to post some daily sharing of beauty through the Lenten season each day. I suspect some days will be too full of other needs to follow through, but by publicly stating this, I add fuel to my intention. I started today by placing these tulips in a public restroom. This I offer to the commuters and travelers.

I plan to explore beauty in the acts and ideas of justice in future posts, but for today, flowers deny the tyranny of the drab for those who can see while standing before a mirror.