Lent through the Side Door

The Opposite of a Pep Talk

Next week we’ll step into Lent once again. I’ve been fleshing it out in metaphor in my mind. I’ve been imagining Lent as a great house.

The front entrance boasts huge stately columns and tastefully potted plants, an immaculate welcome mat and a finely polished brass door knob. It’s the company entrance, the one we use in our Sunday best, shoes shined, not a hair out of place, bearing a fresh pie or a basket of yeast rolls.

But there’s a side entrance, too. It’s nothing to look at, really. A faded little overhang that does little to prevent the mud from caking around the steps. A screen door that screeches on its hinges, paint peeling on the frame. It’s the door you run to when you’ve fallen and scraped your knees. It’s the door you use when you’re close to the people inside, when you don’t stand on formality, when it’s okay to turn up unannounced, in jeans and your worn-out sneakers.

It doesn’t matter which entrance we take. The point is to get inside.

This is my 41st Lent (although, to be fair, I don’t remember the first six or seven of them), and I’ve found all kinds of different ways into the house. The praying, fasting, and almsgiving that the church recommends. Devotionals. Thinly disguised self-improvement schemes. Contests of will and endurance. Some ways are better (and more altruistic) than others, but it always depends on the year, the circumstances, the person.

As we prepare to receive our ashes next week, I want to assure you that if, for whatever reason, you cannot walk through the front entrance, you can use the side door.

The point of all of our Lenten disciplines is to draw us closer to God, to make room for God in our hearts and in lives, to accompany God through God’s suffering, to know that God accompanies us in ours. It may just be that you have all the raw materials for that in your life already.

Perhaps you are weathering a terrible loss or grief, one you cannot see to the other side of. You don’t need to suffer more. God will meet you where you are. You can enter through the side door.

Maybe you are living with an eating disorder or another challenging health condition that requires the utmost tenderness with your body. You don’t need to fast. God will meet you where you are. You can enter through the side door.

Perhaps you are enduring a financial crisis and scarcity the likes of which you’ve never endured. You do not need to give away what you don’t have. God will meet you where you are. You can enter through the side door.

Maybe, though, you have the time and energy and funds to take up new disciplines, and that feels deeply nourishing for you. God will meet you there, too. If it brings you joy or growth, enter through the front door.

God never bars an entrance. And once we’re inside, it doesn’t matter which way we came in. It matters that we’re warm and safe. That we’re welcomed. That we’re together.

This is the opposite of a Lenten pep talk. It’s a Lenten insistence on gentleness. When Jesus was asked how his disciples had the audacity to pick heads of grain on the Sabbath, he answered, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” So, too, we were not made for Lent. Lent was made for us.

Every year we ask and answer the question, “What are you doing for Lent?” So, just in case no one else has told you, let me be the one to say it: if you can’t do this Lent, it’s okay to just be.

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A Few Hopeful Things

-The poet Christian Wiman has a new book out called Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, and that title alone is cause for celebration. It was a joy to write a bit about it for Jesuit Media Lab.

-If you are looking for Lenten accompaniment, let me offer my tried and true recommendations: offerings from the Ignatian Solidarity Network, The Jesuit Conference, and Pray as You Go.

-On Wednesdays I take my son to the library and then to a little cafe we’ve frequented since he was a toddler. It’s already the best day of the week, but this time the delight was magnified by three things: my son’s 35 hold pickups (mostly about airplanes), a brightly blooming hot pink camellia, and a huge puffy Samoyed (YES, A SAMOYED!) we passed on the way into the cafe. We don’t have a pet and likely never will (allergies, small house, smaller yard), but I am not exaggerating when I say that there are some dogs the existence of whom makes my body flood with joy. Samoyeds are very high on the list, seeing as how they essentially look like walking clouds. Bless the loving mind that created them.

Knocking at the door with you,
Cameron