What does the season of Lent mean to me?

The season of Lent is what makes our faith, and the redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ that is its core, personal.

We are not a people that always shout, “Allelujah.” And I like that about us. I believe that Jesus is very much like a middle school teacher. I mean, the guy is born into this world with the purest of intentions, a raging intellect, an innate desire to do good in the world, and the decision to give up his chance at riches and power to help out his brothers and sisters. He spends an inordinate amount of time in preparation for this ministry. He surrounds himself with a community of good people who see the value in what he wants to do. And in the end, of course, they hang him for it.

Amid this character arc, the lord proclaims the glory of God. The divine narrator/protagonist is on a great island of calm at this point in the liturgical calendar. His cute baby years (the whole “I’m coming down here just like you”) part is safely packed away in the attic until college football wraps up again. And the tragicotriumphant climax is a few months off. Yeah, this time is ordinary like the feeling of adolescence.

And so we plop down into the long quiet that is Lent

just coming to grips with who we are.

We ponder the chasm

that divides

our divine potential and our Earth kinetic

We reach out to the ultimate Hang Up:

reality’s inflection point

And hang our sight on the ground

Completion of the circuit

A grounding in Emily’s divinest Sense

Affirming Gibran’s rhetorical:

“And is not the lute that soothes your spirit,

the very wood that was hollowed with knives?”

In our humanity, creation is a carving

So for me, this period of time called Lent accounts not for the breadth of Love

But rather for its depth

Bob Ludwikoski