Lent Week One: Softening
- Donna
- Feb 21, 2021
- 2 min read
Although our outside world may still look like winter, underneath the ground a softening is taking place. Hard shells of bulbs and seeds are beginning to soften, and will soon break open so that new life can make its way up through the hardened earth, into light.
Lent can be a time of softening within us as well. Seeds of new growth, deep within us, begin to soften. New life is stirring.
As we begin this first full week of Lent, how do you feel about such softening? Some of us feel excited and ready to get on with it -- break open and bloom! But others may feel more hesitant. Some of us have worked hard to construct our necessary, protective "shells." God’s call to soften and bloom remains gentle, but persistent. The writer Anais Nin speaks to the strength of love's movement within us:
There came a time
when the risk to remain
tight in the bud was
more painful than the
risk it took to bloom.
Softening often begins when we become aware of the different emotions within us, and spend some time getting to know them. In her book Evidence, poet Mary Oliver writes:
We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.
Softening helps create such a welcoming space in our bodies for our many feelings. Although it might be tempting, we cannot select which emotions to numb. When we numb painful emotions, we also numb the more pleasant emotions. If we want to feel joy, we must also feel sadness.
Jesus willingly spends 40 days in the desert, encountering wild beasts and the temptations of Satan, which illuminates his true mission and way of being in the world.
We can also soften and open to what needs to be encountered within us, so that the truth of who we are can arise and be lived out in greater fullness and freedom.
As angels came to minister to Jesus in the wilderness, we too are not alone. There is help for our journey.
We can ask for it.
"In the Wilderness" by Ron DiCian
Music: "We are not Alone” (by Sharon Singers, words by Pepper Choplin)
I am not asking you
To take this wilderness from me,
To remove this place of starkness
Where I come to know
The wildness within me,
Where I learn to call the names
Of the ravenous beasts
That pace inside me,
To finger the brambles
That snake through my veins,
To taste the thirst
That tugs at my tongue.
But send me
Tough angels,
Sweet wine,
Strong bread:
JUST ENOUGH.
(Jan Richardson)
Reflection questions:
1. Where do you notice softening (or the invitation to soften) in this season of your life, and the life of the world? What feelings do you welcome? What feelings do you resist?
2. What are the tough angels, sweet wine, and strong bread that you need for your Lenten journey? How might these gifts of angels, wine, and bread strengthen you to live with greater compassion and tenderness for yourself and others?
Love the Anais Nin quote. Thank you. Love the contrast between softening and blooming, rather than controlling/even planning(!) to make something happen.
I was struck by the comment, "Softening helps create such a welcoming space in our bodies for our many feelings....we cannot select which emotions to numb. When we numb painful emotions, we also numb the more pleasant emotions. If we want to feel joy, we must also feel sadness." On Friday evening I awoke from sleep close to midnight. I was feeling anxious and unsettled, my mind would not quiet. I knew a needed to sit awake with my feelings for awhile. As I looked out over our backyard I found myself captivated by the sacredness and haunting beauty of our backyard. At first I thought it was a bit eerie looking with it low-hanging gray clouds, white snow tha…