Mardi Gras - Anticipation



Tomorrow the season of Lent begins. Today is Mardi Gras – or Fat Tuesday.  It is traditionally the time just before a season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving when we have our “Alleluias” still.  There is great revelry and fun.  This is a time of release and freedom before the constraints of Lenten disciplines.  Happy Mardi Gras one and all!

Often I take today (or these few days before Ash Wednesday) as a time to pray about what God might be asking of me during the upcoming Lenten days.  I typically resist falling into the “same old, same old” pattern of how I have always kept Lent.  I believe that each year I am called to something new or renewed. The question really is “What do I need to do (or not do) to be open to God’s movement toward resurrection within me?”  

This year I am thinking about the word “Lent.” In French the word “lentement” means slowly and that feels right to me.  I know that this is not the origin of the word, but the sense of moving slowly and deliberately through the next 40 days seems to be my call. I feel moved to slow down where I can, so as to allow the graces of the moment to wash over me and hopefully, stay with me.

The pace of my life, with meetings and chores and phone calls and appointments can be relentless.  There is always so much to do and somewhere to be.  My thoughts when awake and even in sleep are about the next three things to come, leap frogging over the person or situation right in front of me.  Instead of seeing the active presence of God in the moment, I feel as though I am always anticipating God’s actions and not quite experiencing them.  I believe God to be with me, acting in my life and yet sometimes it is only upon reflection that I can see the footsteps of God.

And so as I experience these last hours of Mardi Gras, I am going to try to slow down a bit, open my eyes and ears and heart and pay attention to God right here and now.  I believe that as I do this, I will see, hear, taste, feel and know God-with-us once again.  Yes, there is a discipline to keeping Lent from now until Easter, but it a discipline that can free us for God.  This year I pray that we not experience this time as confining or limiting, but rather that we use this time to know God in a new and deeper way.

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