Wilderness, All Around

Wilderness is everywhere. It's easy to forget that living in a city where the stars are obscured by lights. My schedule is a giant blur of color and I run from one thing to the next, choking down a granola bar to hold me over until who-knows-when. I eat most of meals on the go. If not on the go, then standing, or while reading, or while trying to write. Life moves quickly. School moves even faster. I often feel like I can't keep up, and like I might hurt myself trying to. 

Lent asks me to slow down. The wilderness is likened to times of confusion and despair, but it is also a place of reflection and restructuring. This is the season where I get to think actively about the life I live. Is it what I want? Do I like who I am? Do I feel close to God? It's this last question that usually trips me. Without the expanse of visible stars, I feel disconnected. My world revolves around me. When I slow down and reflect, I reorient my heart to those things that matter. I can pause, letting the silence swell around me. It moves me towards my God-space. The space where I feel at home with the divine. The space that I forsake so easily.  In the silence, I am called back. In the wilderness, I find my way home. 

Sitting in the Dark

I've been sitting in the dark a lot lately. Hiding, really. My mental health struggles come with some anxiety that sometimes has me hiding literally under the bed, making company with the dust bunnies and my nightmares.

But I've also been reminded that the dark is not a bad place. In the cosmos, creation happens in the dark. Where we drape our churches white at the end of this season, some cultures use black to symbolize new life. Black is the color of the night during which things grow, and blackness is a sign of richness in soil. Darkness is creative. Darkness is life giving.

So I'm trying to be comfortable sitting in the dark, spending time with the microorganisms and fungi that are very much alive, making life possible for the budding things to come.

How is it Lent already?!  Really snuck up on me this year, which is ironic considering we already know how the story goes. What does it mean to be in a period of atonement, especially when emotionally you might already be feeling as grey as the sky is today? Does God want me to stay with this feeling, to explore every corner of it, to let it weigh me down for 40 days? Sometimes I feel like I hear from one side that Lent is supposed to be a hard time, a time where we're not comfortable, where it's not  easy...and from other sides I hear that deprivation and solemnity isn't healthy...is there a way to map our self-care onto the grey sky days of Lent that lets us grow spiritually from the intentional experience of our gloominess?

I've had a hard time coming up with something to give up this season- everything I've thought of feels more New Years Resolutiony than actual Lent. Maybe that's because thus far I've been electing to deprive myself of things that aren't that healthy for me to begin with (refined sugar, white flour, butter, fried foods, etc). How do I give up something that will let me feel the weight of that deprivation, without it feeling like I'm just electing to be healthier (which in turn makes it a lot easier to give up)...how do I adopt a Lenten practice that keeps my focus on the cross, and not on my appearance, fitness, or nutrition? Do I give up social media? Driving my car to places within  a mile or two of my apartment? Using the microwave? Netflix?