Sunday April 4-Ps. 23 is perhaps the best-known, best-loved psalm. The choir is singing a number of different settings for this psalm during Lent. I'm not sure why it is so loved, save for its touching the chord of dependence and protection that we may all crave at some level. Sometimes church seems to be the only place where we admit that we are dependent sometimes.With our passion for clean hair, we recoil at oil being poured on our hair when a guest. It looks to a wonderful feeling of being honored at a banquet in the presence of one's enemies. Maybe the feeling is a bit like winning an Academy Award.

 

Monday-Lent is a time when many of us try to give some extra support to charity. it becomes an issue with me when I start making distinctions among the poor. I get so annoyed at gaming the system. I think of the sequence in My Fair Lady where the father argues that the undeserving poor have as many needs as the deserving poor. Jesus is clear; give money to those who ask. Still, the obstacles emerge; am I enabling a chemical dependency; am I rewarding irresponsible behavior? As Mary Chapin Carpenter sang, we may well give money and pray that we don;t look the person in the eye.

 

Tuesday-Out the office window, I can see work being done restoring two brick buildings that had fallen into disrepair. Maybe that's a good image for Lent, repairing parts of our lives that have fallen into disrepair or disuse. Sometimes, a building has to be gutted; sometimes a little exterior or interior work needs to be done. sometimes we return a building to its original state, and sometimes we far exceed the original intention and design.

 

Wednesday-Bonhoeffer wrote a poem in prison as he struggled with his public self and the unseen questions, fears, and doubt that haunted him. All of us seek to project a public self that we feel is superior to our own sense of self. We find dissonance when the two selves don't seem to match up. At the end, he asks again, "who am I." He concludes, "I am thine, O Lord." Maybe it doesn't matter that one seems to exceed the other. in the end, "in life and death, we are the Lord's."

 

Thursday-I went to see Philip Newell at Lindenwood University for a presentation on Celtic spirituality. It emphasizes the natural world as a focus for our prayers and praying in the midst of everyday chores. Here's an ancient prayer: you are the peace of all things calm...you are the door that opens wide...you are my Lord and with me still...you are my savior this very day." How about this one: "may the blessing of the rain be upon you/the soft sweet rain/may it fall upon your spirit/so that all the ittle flowers may spring up/and shed their sweetness on the air."

 

Friday-Abba Apollo of the desert fathers was happy to have some work to do, for he he said, "I go to work with Christ today." I so admire the ability to see Christ as a companion throughout the day. Some days it is hard to seek the Christ in others. It may be particularly difficult on days when one has a hard time seeking the Christ in oneself. If that's a bit much fo ryou, consider that you are doing the work of the 12 for Christ as you bloom where you are planted.

 

Saturday-Patience seems to be an admired virtue that few of us admit to having. The pace of 21st century life makes it difficult, as we strum our fingers waiting for money to pop out of the ATM and more amazingly speak of computers being slow this morning. We want things to happen in the blink of an eye. In the New Testament, the word patience can be long-suffering, an ability to take the curves that life throws at us and endurance, the ability to keep on keeping on. After all, we worship a god for whom a day is like a thousand years. Some things take time.