Devotional by Angela Smith
March 9, 1997
My friends who live in New England claim there are five seasons -- spring, fall, summer winter and mud. They say mud as the season between winter and spring -- the season of melting snow when winter's icy grip loosens its hold but doesn't quite let go.
In the church year, lent might be considered the season of mud -- as a time of transition. Transitions are those periods in our lives when the thick skin of habit that protects us surrenders to possibilities of growth and renewal. We experience an inner thawing that renders us sensitive and vulnerable to the unpredictable until we emerge comfortably into a new way of being.
Transitions are times between endings and new beginnings. The poet T. S. Eliot wrote: "The faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting." It's a difficult concept: that faith, hope and love can be found in waiting. Social justice advocates prefer work to waiting. And yet there are times that require us to be still, to pause and to listen.
We live in a world of rapid and profound change. We see in it in science and technology, we see it in society and politics, we see it in our personal lives. Change is also present in the spiritual realm. Our old understanding of God as a father figure in the sky, evaluating and judging our every action, acting in history to help one and damn another, to many of us, no longer makes sense And yet all of us long to be connected to something higher, to have a purpose and meaning more profound than simply making it through another day.
When we look at change, we should remember we're not just human machines that can be unplugged from one situation and plugged into the next with a minor adjustment or tune-up. We are part of a natural and spiritual rhythm. And that rhythm includes the seasons -- whatever we choose to call them in physical or liturgical terms.
Just as the notes in a piece of music are brought to life by the rests, just as our spirits are renewed and refreshed as we gather together in this place on a Sunday, so when we are lost between an old way that no longer works and a new way that's not yet apparent, we must cultivate our knowledge of waiting.
When Moses led his people out of Egypt, they didn't immediately walk across the border into the Promised Land. Instead they spent years wandering in the wilderness. During that time, their faith in God and in the future was severely tested. Some wanted to go back to the familiar, even if it was slavery. And yet some of the most creative and spiritually transformative events in Jewish history came from this confusing, disorienting, uncomfortable time in the wilderness.
Whenyou lose an important part of your life and new promise is not yet visible, it's easy to feel lost and emotionally flat. When a relationship ends, when we lose a job, when women make changes in their traditional roles, all these cause unease and discomfort.
Even welcome change can be disconcerting. For example, when a couple has their first baby, they lost private time together. In my own life, I can recall reaching major goals and then being confused by how empty I felt. I had at the same time both succeeded and lost my focus and direction.
Change is rarely comfortable. But it's often when we are in a period of transition, that we suddenly discover new springs of creative energy.
While most of us can't afford to follow Jesus model of 40 days in the wilderness, we can find small ways to bring space and reflection into our lives. The season of lent is traditionally a time for spiritual discipline, a time to examine the maturity of our faith, a time to reflect on what it might take to make our Christian witness stronger and more effective. During this time of self-examination, we might pay more attention to our dreams. We might get up earlier for meditation or prayer. We might honor an inner Sabbath in which we don't seek to exert our will on creation, but simply let creation speak to us.
In this in between time it's important we acknowledge that to live is to leave, to lose, to let go . To live is also to arrive, to gain and to embrace. You cannot have one without the other, and you cannot rejoice gladly unless you weep truly.
To grow requires that you leave part of yourself behind -- not discard it but move beyond it. The surest sign of maturity is to realize that loss is the price of love and life. Jesus taught us that lesson 2,000 years ago.
For, to quote T.S. Eliot once again, "What we call a beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
During this season of Lent, in the midst of mud and muddle of transition, let us remember the seeds of Easter promise stir quietly beneath the surface.