Where God's Glory Flashes

Yesterday, I met with my spiritual director. (On Zoom, of course.) He asked me a fairly obvious question to which I had no ready answer. He asked me what I was hoping for this Lent. 

I told him it feels like it's been Lent since last March. I feel like we have lost so much, some much more than others. I told him I feel tired all the time. 

I also told him I have never felt closer to God in all of my life. That "it is well with my soul" and that God and I are on good terms. My daily walks, averaging just over six miles in what has been a cold and snowy year so far, are key to that. So, too, is living with a person I still love after all these years. And more fires in our fireplace than usual. And good food. There is lots for which I am profoundly grateful. 

The Church is more complicated, I confessed. I spend so much time on Zoom all week that I prefer to walk than watch Zoom Church on Sunday mornings. I know that the Church on the other side of this pandemic won't be the same as the Church I was ordained into three decades ago - or even the same as it was in 2019. I worry that when this pandemic ends we will be too tired to do the rebuilding that needs to happen. I worry that inertia will pull us "back" rather than forward because we lack the will and the imagination and the courage to do otherwise. 

So I don't want to give something up this Lent! Which, of course was not the question he asked me, and I knew that. He had asked me what I was hoping for. But we get stuck on a certain way of thinking sometimes. We play the old tapes about what Lent is supposed to look like. 

A colleague of mine wants to "lighten up" this Lent with laughter every day, for many of the same reasons I've articulated above. When I shared this with my monk friend he affirmed that. "If the goal of Lent is to prepare for Easter, then maybe that's exactly right this year." 

So I've been pondering this in my heart, and on my morning walk today. A hymn that I've always enjoyed in Lent (but seems underutilized) came to my mind and heart. Here is a version of the tune (with different words) that I found on YouTube.

I love the French carol melody precisely because it doesn't sound the way we think Lent is "supposed" to sound. In fact, I wonder if that is exactly what makes it a great "theme song" for this pandemic Lent?

But the lyrics for "Now Quit Your Care," written by Percival Dearmer (1867-1936), are worth praying even without the music. They can be found here or on page 145 of The Hymnal 1982. These words, in particular, speak to my heart this peculiar Lent and provide the beginning of an answer to that very good question:

To bow the head in sackcloth and in ashes,
or rend the soul, such grief is not Lent's goal:
but to be led to where God's glory flashes,
his beauty to come near:
Make clear, make clear, make clear where truth and light appear.

This is what my heart yearns for this year: to be led where God's glory flashes! To come near to God's beauty - the beauty of this fragile earth, our island home, and of life itself. What I hope for is to make clear (make clear! make clear!) where truth and light appear. 

I'm not giving up anything this Lent. I'm keeping my eyes open for truth. And light. Every day, all the way to the empty tomb.