I am pleased: Thoughts on Lent, fasting and eschewing religion
Lent is always a holy season for me, and Ash Wednesday begins that season with symbol and service, sometimes song and sometimes solitude.
Here in my community, I make my way to the local Catholic Cathedral (which is under construction, but still serviceable for worship, which I love as a living metaphor) for the imposition of ashes. Last Wednesday morning I arrived 30 minutes early to sit in the sanctuary, after making the sign of the cross with cooled holy water. I sat there in silence and wondered, still, what I will fast for Lent. Usually I know by now, and the service is that holy line of demarcation between not-yet Lent and fully steeped in Lent. I walk out of the cathedral in Lent and on my fast … So I sat and wondered yet again, what to fast. This was getting down to the wire.
I kept thinking: Diet coke? Sweets? Facebook? No, too trivial, really. I prefer to choose things that really confront a vice in my life and allow the season to break its grip on me, so Easter is a true celebration of freedom and resurrection. Other things seemed equally feeble, as I will be “giving them up,” so to speak, during my summer in Burundi this year.
I was a bit unsettled as the first strums of the guitar began, knowing I was not ready to cross that Lenten line. But it was not for me to control. The service began.
Priestly Blessing
We sang from Psalm 51, about clean hearts and transformed lives. It rang true. Then the priestly blessing from an unfamiliar, yet known, voice. It was a voice from a continent I know … I leaned to the left and then to the right to see with my own eyes: rounded cheeks and ebony skin draped in purple robes. The voice was from Africa; from Nigeria to be exact. And he prayed with music in his voice and an accent that felt blessed to my weary ears.
As the service unfolded, there were readings from Joel about justice and goodness and thinking afresh about neighborliness. There was a reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church. There was, in that lovely African tone, a reading from Matthew’s gospel. It was the passage about alms giving, praying and fasting in secret. And as he began to read the exhortation to fast in loveliness … I heard or felt something …
Your fast is in Africa, not here and not now. When you return to Burundi you will fast later and longer than others, and that is enough. I am pleased with that fast from you.
It is enough
It made me weep through the rest of the gospel reading … My fast is coming and it is enough, it is valid, the dying to vices happens there and it counts regardless of the ecclesiastical calendar. So all the trivial things, the creature comforts, the lost mobility and limited connectivity, the loss of fluency in language and separation from home and country are my Lenten fast, it just comes later this year. But it is enough.
When I processed toward the altar, he was the one who stood before me to impose the ashes. The cross was thick with ash and oil, marking me with African hands for African soil. It felt holy, like a seal.
What levity on the verge of Lent! God never ceases to surprise me with His sense of things. God’s willingness to eschew religiosity, even meaningful and well-practiced, because it is the heart-shaping that matters most. So for me this year, Lent will come late and last long … in Burundi.
I walked out of the cathedral lighter.
About Kelley:
Kelley Johnson is director of Amahoro Africa with her husband Claude. She’s a thinker, connector, advocate, avid reader and mother of two beautiful children. Kelley blogs at Anchored in Burundi.
