Lenten Pin A Day: Attention

At every turn there is something more to acquire, something to distract our attention, something to divert the unchangeable footprints we leave behind.

Lent is very much about what needs to be left behind and paying attention to the trail we are leaving in our wake.  Observant care, civility, courtesy, notice, awareness, concentration.  Who are we, and what are we made of?  What are we to do with this one precious life?  How can we be more caring, more observant, and how can we concentrate on where God is leading us?  

Looking back I find it strangethat I practiced Lent even when I wasn’t a practicing Christian.  I liked the pattern of the yearly challenge.  Given how un-associated I was with church I wonder how I even knew it was Lent.  One time I gave up speeding (really), another time soda pop.  Back then I would look at my life for habits that were less than helpful, practices which distracted my attention from what really matters.  Each time this Lenten devotion changed my behavior for a while after Lent, if not forever.  

As I turned toward an active practice of Christian-ness I don’t think that my perspective changed, but I did increase the strenuousness of my self-challenge. One year I tried to give up being mean to my roommate’s boyfriend; but that went poorly immediately.  So I was dared by a pal to give up meat (a classic Lenten devotion).  By the end of the season I felt so much better that I have never eaten meat since (20 years this season!).  I also added a positive project, I believe that it was cleaning out and redecorating the church nursery.  

Yet still, I hadn’t deeply connected the theology of Lent and the passion of Christ to my Lenten self-improvement challenges.  That took a few more years of regular year-round practice, and it required conversations with my communities (living and textual).  Ultimately for those of us who follow the way of Christ our annual practice of a Holy Lent must be focused on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Day and night we must return to humility and use it as a compass to guide us on the true course.

If you have never tried a ‘holy’ Lenten devotion, then this might be the season to begin.  As the TS Elliott poem says: What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.  What is God calling you to pay attention to, what are you called to leave behind, what are you called to begin?