IVP - Strangely Dim - March 2009 Archives

Harriet Tubman

Seeing as how Women's History Month is just about over, and seeing as how there have been so many fantastic women in history, and seeing as how I like to celebrate people, I thought I'd better take a hint from the woman I've chosen and take some action.

I'm taking us out of the world of the first few centuries after Christ's death (when the women Dave and Christa have blogged about lived) and into an entirely different world, which is what this woman's story has always done for me--me who has lived in white suburbia my whole life, whose only injuries in life have been sports-related (and not very serious), whose childhood was filled with swing sets and dolls, who sometimes complained about going to school . . .

I first learned about Harriet Tubman in elementary school when I read a biography on her for a book report. What do I remember from that book? That she was born into slavery, that she escaped and that she helped hundreds of other slaves find freedom via the Underground Railroad. From relatively early on in my life I've had a kind of disbelieving fascination with the period of slavery in the United States. It was, and is, still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that, not that long ago, millions of African Americans were viewed as less than human, as property, that they were bought and sold and beaten and whipped, all legally, as an accepted and normal practice in society. Stories like Harriet's made it a little more real for me, which I need, even as I hate the fact that it happened at all. Her story helps by showing both sides, though: the evil that humans are capable of in how they treat other human beings, but also the courage and goodness we're capable of as well.

It's been a number of years since I read Harriet's biography, so I looked her up to rediscover some of the specifics I've forgotten about her life--specifics that make her even more impressive:

• In her earlier years she was beaten and whipped; in one instance she was seriously injured when an angry slaveowner threw a metal weight at a different slave, but missed, hitting Harriet in the head instead. She suffered effects from the injury for the rest of her life.

• Almost as soon as she escaped from slavery, she went back to rescue family members. And friends. And slaves she'd never met. And she was so good at it, they couldn't catch her (though there were high rewards for her capture). For her skillful and successful guidance of slaves from the South to freedom, people dubbed her "Moses."

• When the Civil War started she joined the Union Army and worked as a nurse, a cook, a scout and a spy. She led a raid that freed hundreds of slaves.

• Later on in her life she fought not just for the rights of African Americans but particularly for women. She also donated land for a nursing home (named the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged), which is where she lived out her last days.

What. a. woman. I imagine her as spunky, animated, straightforward--a no-nonsense woman--as well as compassionate, level-headed, calm. And, though Harriet's personality seems so different from Julian of Norwich or Clare, she too had a deep, rich faith. And that faith is, I think, what must have brought about the quality I most admire her for: her courage. If I could have sat next to her nursing-home bed in her last days, I think I would have simply had to start with words of Sara Groves: "Tell me what you know about God and the world and the human soul." My guess is that deep suffering produced deep faith, which produced deep courage.

These days I feel much more like the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz than Harriet Tubman of the Underground Railroad. But perhaps her story--and the stories of so many others who have suffered and overcome and then worked to bring so many more out of suffering--will be my "Oz," my "wizard," spurring me on to do my part in freeing the many people who are still living in slavery today--whether it's emotional or physical or spiritual--and reminding me that the God in whom she believed so deeply is the same One I worship today. He still desires justice, and he still invites women of faith, like Harriet and Clare and Macrina and Helena and maybe some of us, to be strong and courageous and to follow God on whatever difficult path he lays out for us.

We Interrupt These Women . . .

While it's still Women's History Month, it's also still Lent. As such I wanted to once again riff on some recent Lenten reflections by our publisher Bob Fryling.

Bob is delightfully elliptical; in fact, his leadership style is modeled after the ellipse, which he tells us has not one but two focal points. You don't choose between two apparently contradictory targets; rather, you embrace the paradox of both and allow them to simultaneously inform your mission. An example is the suggestion that the goal of ministry is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." When you think elliptically, you get to write funky sentences like that.

This elliptical orientation makes sense of some spiritual realities that occupy the background of our faith experience. Most of the year, for example--especially in a culture as preoccupied with the self as one might accuse contemporary Western culture of being--our faith experience orbits the central idea that we are loved by God. One of our authors once critiqued this lopsided theology as "Goduhluv," to be said with an Elvis-Presleyan sneer. And in fact, if we're honest, even while we eagerly worship the "Goduhluv" we retain this nagging instinct that if God loves us totally, it's because he's overlooked something about us.

We retain this nagging instinct because it's the other focal point of the ellipse that we inhabit. "We are sinners," Bob told us this morning. He didn't wag his finger and shout it in accusation but rather shrugged his shoulders and spoke sheepishly, apologetically. "It's embarrassing," he admitted, and he's right.

We tend to think of sin from the side of triumph and distance ourselves from it, denouncing it as horrific and detestable. It is those things, but it's also central to the ellipse we inhabit, and to admit as much is to shrug, not out of cavalier resignation but out of exhausted futility.

Sin is where we live during Lent. It's a helpful corrective, I think, to the general tenor of our year, in which we hover around a different focus. And yet to live too long in Lent alone, to enter into the orbit of our own sinfulness, to gaze on it too intently, is to lose sight of the equal and paradoxical Easter reality that organizes our ellipse: we are loved by God.

Bob told a story about a time while he was working in campus ministry when a young woman asked him for some advice. He thought she needed to pick a class for her fall semester and was taken aback when she broke down crying. "I can't believe that God would love me."

Who knows what occupied her field of vision as she wept; perhaps she was embroiled in a low self-image, or perhaps she was orbiting the reality of sinfulness. Really, who cares? What was obvious was that this woman was trapped in Lent. She had lost sight of Easter. Bob wisely offered her a glimpse. "I challenge you to read Romans 8 every day for a month." Here's a key passage:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There are forty days in Lent. Sundays don't count. Every Sunday in Lent is a reprieve, a day of rest in the midst of our forty-day Lenten observance. So maybe on the remaining Sundays of this year's Lent we can begin and end our days, and so begin and end our weeks, and so occasionally divert our orbit during Lent, by reflecting on this passage; by remembering that God is not subordinate to our sin, and that whatever else occupies our ellipse, we continue to live in the love of God.

***

In other news, I was recently sent an analysis of Strangely Dim from a college student who shall remain nameless. She had several insightful observations of the site and its authors (I feel a bit found out, to be honest), but I wanted to highlight one judgment she handed down on us: as a blog, we are, I'm simultaneously proud and chagrined to say, "always family friendly." Put that in your bubble pipe and blow bubbles with it.

Poor Clare

We continue our celebration of women from Christian history with a key figure in the monastic tradition, profiled by Scott Bessenecker in his Likewise book The New Friars:

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Just a few years after the start of [St.] Francis's order, on March 18, 1212, the seeds of another order germinated, this time in a young woman. On that brisk Italian night eighteen-year-old Clare Offreduccio snuck out of her Assisian home for a clandestine meeting. This was not a rebellious teenager stealing away under cover of dark in order to engage in some kind of silly prank or passionate interlude with a young man. On that destiny-forging Palm Sunday evening, Francis wed Clare to Jesus Christ and to a life of voluntary poverty.

 

The preaching of Francis was a magnet for idealists regardless of gender. Thomas of Celano, the first biographer for Francis, describes Clare as "young in age, mature in spirit, steadfast in purpose and most eager in her desire for divine love, endowed with wisdom and excelling in humility, bright in name, more brilliant in life, most brilliant in character." For years the beautiful but fiercely independent Clare had spurned the machinations of her very wealthy family to marry her off. There were certainly rich and handsome suitors who would have gladly solved the family problem of Clare's singleness. To be a wealthy fifteen-year-old girl and unwed was strange in Clare's day; to be eighteen and single was a downright embarrassment, making it appear that something was wrong with her or the family. And her younger sisters wouldn't be able to marry unless Clare did so first. Rumors spread and the pressure to marry increased.

 

On that Sunday evening when Clare knelt to pledge herself to the Franciscan ideal, Francis cut her hair, shaving the crown of her head (a practice of the monastic orders that perhaps harkens back to the Nazirite vow), and then covered her head with a veil. Dressed in sackcloth, she was whisked away to a Benedictine nunnery, as it would have been out of the question for her to live with the dozen or so brothers holed up with Francis. The next day the family patriarchs, learning of Clare's folly, raided the Benedictine house to "rescue" Clare from her impulsive decision and delusion under the teachings of a madman. But Clare was neither impulsive nor deluded. She pulled off her veil, revealing the tonsure cut into her hair, and claimed the refuge the church afforded those who would make such a pledge.

 

The excitement of a family kidnap attempt was not the Benedictine sisters' cup of tea. They asked Francis to do something else with Clare besides foist her and the unwanted attention that came with her onto their community. Since the brothers were now living at Saint Mary's, Francis moved Clare into an addition he had made to San Damiano, and she spent the next forty-one years living as austerely as the brothers. She opened the floodgates for young women and was soon joined by her fifteen-year-old sister, Catherine, and eventually by her own widowed mother. Although Clare was expected to live the single life in keeping with medieval norms that associated celibacy with the clergy, she held the conviction that following Jesus is sweeter than yielding to the social pressure to marry at all costs. Writing to Agnes of Prague, daughter to the king of Bohemia, Clare addresses Agnes's decision to refuse marriage to Emperor Frederick II and join the Poor Clares: "You, more than others, could have enjoyed the magnificence and honor and dignity of the world, and could have been married to the illustrious Emperor with splendor befitting you and His Excellency. You have rejected these things and have chosen with your whole heart and soul a life of holy poverty and destitution. Thus, you took a spouse of a more noble lineage."

 

Within twenty-five years Clare drew fifty other women to the Franciscan life, and just hours before her death she received papal approval for the rule she had written for her community, thereby becoming the first woman to define a rule of life for a community of women. Many men, bishops and popes included, tried to dissuade Clare from the strict rule of absolute poverty that governed the lives of the sisters, but she stubbornly refused to live in any other way. If poverty was good enough for the Son of God, it was good enough for them.

 

St. Macrina the Younger (AD 330-390)

To continue our celebration of Christian women throughout history, we've chosen someone many people have never heard of: St. Macrina the Younger. Despite her relative obscurity, she greatly influenced people who helped to shape the course of Christian history and theology. We've included a very brief introduction to Macrina, followed by her deathbed prayer. All of the quotations, including the prayer recorded by Gregory of Nyssa (with many other sources), can be found online at the Medieval Sourcebook: www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/macrina.html#life.

***

Macrina the Younger is the little-known elder sister of two of the Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great. When she was twelve years old, she was, at her father's discretion, betrothed to a man who died before they could be married. Upon his death, Macrina considered herself to be a widow, vowed to remain a virgin and refused to marry. Instead, she spent much of her life as a devoted helper to her mother in the raising of her many brothers and sisters. Some time after her father's death, and "when the cares of bringing up a family and the anxieties of their education and settling in life had come to an end," Macrina persuaded her mother to join her in a life of asceticism and poverty, serving and living with the poor. Over time, they established a community of like-minded women which became a monastery that included both male and female adherents. After her mother's death, Macrina assumed oversight of the women of the order.

Due to her excellent spiritual education at the hand of her mother, Emmelia, Macrina was highly influential in the religious training of her brothers, especially Peter (later, St. Peter of Sebaste), who was a great help to Macrina and Emmelia in the years after her father's death. Eventually, Peter assisted with oversight of the men of the monastery, was ordained to the priesthood, and later stood with his brothers, Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great, against the Arians.

St. Macrina the Younger is remembered by several Christian traditions, including Anglican, Orthodox and Catholic, for her humility, piety, chastity and charitable work.

A prayer uttered by Macrina shortly before her death was recorded by Gregory of Nyssa in "Life of Macrina," and is included below. 

Macrina's Dying Prayer

Thou, O Lord, hast freed us from the fear of death. Thou hast made the end of this life the beginning to us o£ true life. Thou for a season restest our bodies in sleep and awakest them again at the last trump. Thou givest our earth, which Thou hast fashioned with Thy hands, to the earth to keep in safety. One day Thou wilt take again what Thou hast given, transfiguring with immortality and grace our mortal and unsightly remains. Thou hast saved us from the curse and from sin, having become both for our sakes. Thou hast broken the heads of the dragon who had seized us with his jaws, in the yawning gulf of disobedience. Thou hast shown us the way of resurrection, having broken the gates of hell, and brought to nought him who had the power of death--the devil. Thou hast given a sign to those that fear Thee in the symbol of the Holy Cross, to destroy the adversary and save our life. O God eternal, to Whom I have been attached from my mother's womb, Whom my soul has loved with all its strength, to Whom I have dedicated both my flesh and my soul from my youth up until now--do Thou give me an angel of light to conduct me to the place of refreshment, where is the water of rest, in the bosom of the holy Fathers. Thou that didst break the flaming sword and didst restore to Paradise the man that was crucified with Thee and implored Thy mercies, remember me, too, in Thy kingdom; because I, too, was crucified with Thee, having nailed my flesh to the cross for fear of Thee, and of Thy judgments have I been afraid. Let not the terrible chasm separate me from Thy elect. Nor let the slanderer stand against me in the way; nor let my sin be found before Thy eyes, if in anything I have sinned in word or deed or thought, led astray by the weakness of our nature. O Thou Who hast power on earth to forgive sins, forgive me, that I may be refreshed and may be found before Thee when I put off my body, without defilement on my soul. But may my soul be received into Thy hands spotless and undefiled, as an offering before Thee.

Helena of Constantinople

We continue our celebration of women from Christian history with Tamara Park--or, more specifically, her profile of Helena of Constantinople, mother of Roman Emperor Constantine, from the book Sacred Encounters from Rome to Jerusalem.

***

I like liberated old ladies. I know a couple of them. They can dole out sage advice, crack random jokes and, if need be, fart in public. It's those liberated old ladies who have lived well and loved generously that can take risks few others dare.

This pilgrimage was inspired by such a lady. Her name is Helena. . . . Helena was the mother of Constantine, the fourth-century emperor (the one with the Arch). Much of Helena's life is left to legend, but what we can piece together is that she was born around 248 C.E. in ancient Bithynia, today's Turkey. While working in a tavern she caught the attention of a Roman soldier, Constantius Chlorus. They became lovers, but as he rose through the ranks of power he moved on from her, leaving Helena a divorcée and single mother in her late thirties.

Fortunately her son did quite well for himself, making emperor and all. Helena is said to have officially embraced Christianity after Constantine's conversion in 312. So at the age of sixty-four she committed to a monotheistic religion, and almost fifteen years later, she became Christianity's first pilgrim from Rome to Jerusalem.

Helena is both a muse and a mystery to me. I envision her heading east on her historic journey looking elegant but wearing durable walking shoes. She insists on managing her luggage on her own, but is slightly scattered getting going. She's wonderfully free-spirited, still able to flirt, and yes, deeply spiritual. She is one of those women who has nothing to prove but loads to say. So to me, she's the quintessential liberated old lady.

Of course, that's simply the vision of her I've constructed. Eusebius, a church historian and contemporary of Helena's, describes the empress as handing out money to the poor, clothes to the naked and justice to the oppressed as she traversed from Rome to Jerusalem. Eusebius also notes that whenever she encountered a church along the way, she couldn't resist stopping to pray.

Helena's legend looms large once she makes it to the Holy Land. The majority of Christian pilgrim sites in Israel today are tied to her pilgrimage, as she scoped out sites attached to the story of Jesus and the early saints. Some places she visited already had a tradition of being sacred; others seem to have been declared holy after she shared a cup of tea with a hospitable local. Helena's biggest claim to fame was her discovery of the cross of Christ. Whether that was a legitimate find or not is debatable, but what is clear is that when she arrived in Jerusalem, it was considered a backwater city that had passed its prime. When she left, it was poised for a thriving pilgrimage industry.

Helena returned to Rome with a trunk full of relics, including a cross. Shortly afterward she died. In Helena's honor, Constantine built churches on many of the holy sites she visited, including the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.

I really don't know what compelled Helena to make the pilgrimage from Rome to Jerusalem. Eusebius portrays her as driven by religious enthusiasm, while later historians speculate that her pilgrimage was politically motivated. Perhaps she was trying to bolster her son's waning popularity. Constantine had recently made some radical religious reforms, including replacing many political officials with Christian dignitaries and suppressing pagan cult activities. He also made a few relational faux pas, such as murdering his wife, Fausta, and his son, Crispus, the year before Helena's historic journey.

I don't have the inside scoop on the empress's motives. I would like to think that in the mix of Helena's motives was a desire to see if this religion she converted to late in life was any different than the cults she grew up with--that ultimately her fourteen-hundred-mile trek from Rome to Jerusalem was a quest for truth. But what I take from Eusebius's tiny scrapbook of her life, and from all the holy sites helped along by her pilgrimage, is this: she had courage to go and capacity to savor the journey. On a trip of over a thousand miles she took time to talk to, listen to and respond to people en route. And when she got to the Holy Land, she wanted to go everywhere Jesus had been.

 

Julian of Norwich

Who better to launch our celebration of women's history than the endearing Christian mystic Julian of Norwich? Likewise Books had the audacity to claim her as one of our own when we launched our website. Here's what you'll find posted there about Julian; be sure to check out the other like-minded ancestors there too, in the incomplete catalog called "We Too Are Likewise."  

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The hermit of Norwich was first spotted by a group of anchorite enthusiasts and a tailor peddling soft linens. Her face is said to have appeared suddenly in the window of a modest hut. As no one in the observing party knew the recluse (and as none wanted to sound foolish), they referred to her as Julian--the name of a nearby parish. Julian, they reported, was enjoying a view of an effigy portraying a slender, effeminate-looking saint.

Scholars speculate that perhaps Julian's admiration for this statue and other diminuitive items inspired the first of her sixteen ecstatic visions:

In this vision he also showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut in the palm of my hand, and it was as round as a ball. . . . I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. . . . We need to know the littleness of all created beings and to set at nothing everything that is made in order to love and possess God who is unmade.

Still others claim that the saintly presence outside her window explains her habit of referring to Jesus as "our Very Mother, Jesus."

Julian's birth mother was known among Norwich locals to be "troubled" on account of Julian's strange behavior as a child. It seems the little girl had a way of disappearing.* Years later, though, Julian's mother found relief in a particular passage of her daughter's book Showings. Reading the small book for the first time, this mother was met with an unforeseeable degree of coolness**:

We know that our mothers only bring us into the world to suffer and die, but our true mother, Jesus, he who is all love, bears us into joy!

And then:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

***

For more on Julian of Norwich see Bernard McGinn, ed., The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Modern Library, 2006), pp. 240-42.

*While a mode of disappearance is common in children, there are always a select number of babes that inherit the gift of mystical leaving and are said to go meet with God.

**Books generating pleasant coolness or detachment are rare.

Women's History Month

So, it is nearly the middle of March, a month which, like February, has nearly sprung away without mention of some important remembrances which these months are specially designated to honor. Since March is Women's History Month, we'd like to take some time to pay attention to some of the women whose lives have influenced us personally, culturally and spiritually.

We here at Strangely Dim will take turns highlighting some of the female historical figures who have especially caught our eye. We invite you, too, to take time to reflect on those who have gone before.

In the Meantime

Each week during Lent my church provides a card with a spiritual discipline on it, along with questions and reflections, to help us engage in some specific, intentional practices throughout this church season. Last week the discipline was faith; this week it's mourning. I'm seeing that the two go hand-in-hand.

A friend told me recently she had a hard time moving into Lent, as it seems there is already so much to mourn about; we don't need more suggestions! Indeed, every day a good portion of the news is focused on the economy: unemployment numbers, foreclosure percentages, Wall Street losses, decreasing sales. But most of us don't need the news to tell us we're in a recession; we each feel the crunch in some way, whether it's higher grocery bills or pay cuts or job losses. I imagine that many, many business leaders--as well as thousands of workers all over the country--are lying awake more than ever, wondering if their company, or job, will still be there next week.

The publishing industry has certainly not been immune to the shaky economy. We at InterVarsity Press, like publishers all over, are facing the effects of these uncertain economic times. What do we do? As our publisher, Bob Fryling, encouraged us at an office meeting this week, we work, we pray. We fight to gain perspective.

Bob offered us a "theology of recession," a perspective that, ironically, struck him as he was writing on a theology of growth. I looked up recession in the dictionary, and its first, more general definition is "the act of withdrawing or going back." It strikes me that Lent is a time of intentional recession, a time when we withdraw from some of the normal places and pieces of our lives and go back to the beginning: to the fact that we're made from dust and will return to dust; to the fact that we're sinners in need of grace; to the fact that we're sinners redeemed by grace. Lent gives us perspective on recession.

In this economic crisis, many people have been forced to give up things they loved, to go without anything that isn't an absolute necessity. During Lent, however, many of us choose to give something up, to refrain from using what we have to see who we are without it, to practice restraint, to hear God speak in the stillness and longing. It gives us perspective on what grows when we go without things--whether we chose to give them up or not.

Also in these hard times, many people are mourning--mourning the loss of their job or their house or their retirement. In Lent, though, we participate in a different type of mourning, not over material loss but over our own sin and the ways it separates us from God. And as we sit in this deeper sadness, we realize the significance of eternal grace and reconciliation with God--a relationship that can't be taken from us. We're also reminded that the God who would give up his own Son to save us still cares that deeply for us now and will be faithful to meet our deepest needs.

In Psalm 39 David asks a helpful question, one that's good for us to ask in these days of mourning: "What am I doing in the meantime, Lord?" (The Message). In this economic recession we work and we pray. And in this season of Lent we sit and we pray. Both recessions bring opportunities for growth in our faith in God, which is what the Holy Spirit loves to bring about in us. As we pray, as we mourn, the Holy Spirit works. And, in the meantime, as he works we gain perspective so that we can answer with David: "Hoping, that's what I'm doing--hoping."

To Regret or Not to Regret

OK. Here's my Chocolat dilemma. How do I manage to maintain my fleeting sense of relevance while writing a post about The Bachelor? That's right; I watched the ultimate guilty pleasure among the panoply of reality television. At least, I watched the very special episode, "After the Final Rose," which made my wife exceedingly happy, thank you very much. I share this with you not to invite the widespread ridicule that I fully expect to receive but to address what I think is a pressing problem in contemporary culture: a pandemic of life without regrets.

The Bachelor(TM), in case you don't read Us Weekly, dumped one woman on the season finale in favor of another, then--in the very special epilogue--dumped his chosen one for the woman he had previously dumped. He was appropriately contrite; I will grant him that. He acknowledged that both women had the right to be mad at him, and he admitted that what he was doing was awful, truly awful, particularly to the woman he had chosen, particularly because this rejection could have taken place off camera but instead was broadcast to millions. The only thing, really, that distinguished this very special episode of The Bachelor from every single episode of Jerry Springer is the absence of a live studio audience. Some extraterrestrial intelligent being, several light years from now, will catch "After the Final Rose" in its satellite dish and mutter, "What a jerk."

Nevertheless, the Bachelor(TM) said with great conviction that he has no regrets. Moreover, he said that the worst thing a person can do is to live with regrets. Just so we're clear: according to this logic, it's better to humiliate two women in front of millions of people than to wish that he hadn't.

I don't think the Bachelor(TM) has thought this worldview through. Participants in reality shows such as this one are often forced on the spot to offer philosophical rationale for decisions that were typically made with little philosophical reflection. They stammer and struggle until they find a rhythm of coolness, until they latch on to some proverb their life coach or their enabling grandparents or their childhood celebrity hero once told them: learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. Or something like that. Then they get their confidence back and state with great conviction "I'm OK, You're OK"--or something like that.

I happen to think that it's good to regret things that are regrettable. If we are finite--if, as the priest tells us as he adorns our head with ashes at the beginning of Lent, we are but dust, and to dust we will return--then we simply cannot make decisions or take actions that are guaranteed to be right. We will, eventually, inevitably, be wrong. And if we are fallen--if, as the prophet Hosea tells us, we have broken our covenant with God in ways similar to Adam's original breach of the covenant--then we have wronged more than one another. In a cosmic sense, we have offended the universe and its Creator. That sounds like something that merits a little regret.

Regret is a concept foreign to a culture of achievement. Regret kills momentum and creates self-doubt, both of which are sins against the push to excel. The only thing to regret, according to the culture of achievement, is regret itself. Regret is the tortoise, and we are the hares. The only thing is, the tortoise always catches up to us, and then we have to deal with it.

Lent deals with regret in a different way from the Bachelor(TM). Where the Bachelor(TM) eschews regret, burying it and denying it ever existed, Lent gives it time and space, an atmosphere to do the formative work that regret can do: regret can mature us if we let it.

Regret can also destroy us if we let it, which is likely the great fear of the Bachelor(TM) and all his ilk. Thank God that our regrets are taken to the cross with Christ, where he puts them to death and then rises again to lead us forward--into maturity, into health, into wholeness, into newness of life. We worry that regret will end us, but in truth regret will end, and by God's grace we will go on. Or something like that.

My Chocolat Dilemma

We're in the season of Lent. Here's my problem: I found myself this year completely unprepared for it. I'm supposed to give something up, right? Chocolate, coffee, wine, television . . . I've done it all before. Last year, because letting go of just one thing didn't seem "big enough," I gave up the trifecta: coffee, chocolate and television (well, except for the news). But this year I've been somewhat at a loss.

I like Lent. I need its solemnity to bring me back to center, to Christ's suffering on my behalf and to my deep need of his grace. I also like chocolate (shocking, I know). So, of course I love the movie Chocolat, especially at this time of year--because the story takes place during Lent, and chocolate gets a lot of screen time. In between the shots of this luscious, tempting, dark, edible silk is a story of an entire town which, above all else, strives for a life of tranquilité.

 

Of course, this is a façade. No town is really as tranquil as this one strives to appear, and this little village is ruled more by fear than by anything else. No one steps out of line. Discipline seems to rule. Everyone wears muted colors and black--right down to the women's shoes. Everyone attends church and participates in the Lenten fast. No one appears to have any fun at all, ever. In fact, one sweet old man for many long years has remained silent about his love for a woman in the village. He doesn't want to rock the boat. With perhaps one or two exceptions, no one does.

 

Just as Lent comes upon the village, the north wind drives a strange woman and her daughter into town, bearing with them strange, atheist ways and gorgeous, sensuous, sinful chocolate. These strangers don't trace the same grain in the wood: the woman wears red shoes; they open a chocolaterie during the Lenten fast--high treason as far as the mayor is concerned. The villagers seem like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, simultaneously startled and paralyzed. They band together out of fear, but, I think, they privately begin to hope a little for some freedom.

 

Now, there are many things that can be taken away from this movie. But, as the Lenten season moves forward, two observations in particular have impacted my decision about this year's Lenten season.

 

First, for this village, appearance is everything. The people are compelled to live the way they do more by the steel-toed boot of their mayor than by personal conviction. Unrequited love, abusive relationships, thwarted childhood, failed marriages--all of these things lie beneath the surface, but no one acknowledges them. The town is tranquil on the surface, but no one is allowed to be human! They are miserable, but they won't admit it.

 

Second, the woman, who seems so free from what she considers useless, needless tradition and restriction, is herself trapped by the expectations placed on her by her deceased mother (whose ashes she carries with her wherever she goes). The nomadic life she shares with her daughter, while exotic from the outside, is an isolated one. She is lonely. She is as afraid to be herself, as bound by tradition, as the people she has come to liberate.

 

The characters of Chocolat remind me of how easy it is to become entrenched by the familiar, to allow the doing of things to obscure the reasons for doing them. Observing Lent is an important part of the Christian spiritual journey, and giving up things that give us pleasure has value. However, there are things about Lent that frustrate me, and this may be the real reason why "giving something up" can seem so trivial. Each of us could give up everything for the next forty days, but without the pain of real honesty--about our individual and corporate sin, about our flawed, shared humanness--we miss the boat. Fasting can become a façade.

 

So, this year, Lent is different for me. Rather than trying to just give something up, I've decided to add one or two things: sharing with friends about our Lenten path; reading Scripture more often; confessing more freely; journaling more frequently; forgiving more fully. Lent as a season offers a time in which these things, and more, might perhaps be contemplated and practiced more deliberately and carefully than the rest of the year. Perhaps as we fill our lives up with them, the rest will give way to the humanness that Christ's sacrifice frees us to embrace.