In the Christian world, Lent comes, as it always does, in late winter/early spring, when the world is grey, and seasons shifting.
The beginning of the 40-day Lenten season is always Ash Wednesday – 40 days before Easter. Lent’s arrival is charted by the skies, as Easter’s date is a fixed calculation: the first Sunday, after the first full Moon, after the spring equinox. Like Christmas, when wise persons searched the heavens for a star, there is clearly something cosmic bout Lent’s beginning.
Lent signals change, and even more, transformation. We observe Lent, and its traditional practices of “prayer, fasting and almsgiving”, in hope of that transformation – both personally and communally. People “give up” some of life’s good gifts, to be able to see from another perspective. People also “take on” practices for Lent – like spiritual reading, attending to the works of mercy, caring for those made poor.
Lent 2024 occurs in the midst of today’s ills: wars, personal and public dishonesty, conspiracy theories, political “strong-men”, floods, famines, fires, climate change, and the skewed distribution of the world’s wealth. The distortions humans have created on our beautiful planet-home can feel overwhelming. I can feel like a tiny person on a tiny planet, in a vast and still expanding universe. A person so much in need of the transformation Easter promises,
In those moments, an “easter whisper” often sounds. A scripture passage, a song, a person ,or a poem enters my day, and buoys my spirit. Such as this one today, from Mary Oliver:
The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,
shoulders, and all the rest…1
Oliver says that spirit could float—but prefers to “plumb rough matter….” And so “it enters us”– fingers, toes, shoulders, and all the rest. She says that Spirit “needs the metaphor of the body, … the body’s world, instinct and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,
to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is—
so it enters us— “
What an amazing description of God’s work in the world, shining/burning through us!
Which brings me back to a familiar theme in today’s Catholic world – the Synod on Synodality 2021-2024, a moment in history that needs all of us to shine our light. Might carrying forward the work of the Synod be part of Lenten practice?
It will be for me. I will make time over these Lenten days, to “sow seeds” of the Synod. I will take part in synodal conversations, and find joy in the company of others, as we contribute to the great work of becoming a listening: synodal church in mission.
There are many places on the web that carry links to Synod documents, and suggestions for action. This RNDM website is one of them: How to Participate in the Synod on Synodality
This is a worthy project, and I have renewed energy in envisaging it as offering Spirit an opportunity to “dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest.”
May Spirit plumb the rough matter of me, and enable me to shine with Spirit.
May Spirit plumb the rough matter of us all, and create light abounding.
1 Mary Oliver. Poem. Poem. Available at Poeticous. https://www.poeticous.com/mary-oliver/poem-the-spirit Accessed February 9, 2024.
Veronica Dunne is a Sister of our Lady of the Missions (RNDM), who has primarily worked as an educator and counsellor in institutional and community based settings in Canada. She has also served with the RNDMs outside of Canada in Senegal, Peru, and Aotearoa New Zealand.
A 2002 Doctor of Ministry graduate from the University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto, she subsequently served as director of the Doctor of Ministry program at St. Stephen’s College at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Her current research interests are in eco-theology and cosmology, and their intersections with indigenous cosmologies and spiritualties.
She presently serves on the RNDM leadership team in Canada.
