40 questions for contemplative attention
Ken Sehested
Prelude. Sufi dance, featuring Rana Gorgani, Farid Sheek, Mirtohid Radfar
Call to worship. “Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist, considers silence to be not the absence of sound, but the absence of noise. As I’ve been dwelling on silence in preparation for this reflection, I’ve thought about this definition and tried to figure out, then, what noise is. Last week, during a hike, I sat by Deep Creek in the Smokies, my feet in the water, not able to hear anything but the thundering sound of the water over the rocks. I wondered: Is that noise? Is noise just loud sounds, or is it a word describing things that assault our senses in an unpleasant, unsettling, or undesirable way? If so, then for me, noise would not just refer to sounds, but also to billboards, and to those videos playing at gas pumps. It would be the words scrolling endlessly on news shows, and a riot of perfumes wafting from the centers of 
department stores. It would include the garbage piled up by the river after the hurricane, and the lies coming from amplified voices of power in our society.
“Perhaps noise is anything that takes my attention away from that which most deserves my attention. And if that’s the case, then silence would be a lack of these things, a state allowing me to focus on that which most deserves my attention.” —continue reading Dr. Amy Boyd’s “Reflection on Silence,” Circle of Mercy Lenten reflections
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Lent’s labor is designed as special time and attention to our own hearts and minds; to examine the work of our hands, the paths of our feet; to inquire into the ways and wherefores we give attention with our eyes and our ears; to audit our speech, whether we have been true and truthful, whether we have said too much—or too little; to scrutinize our longings and desires to see if any have breached their healthy boundaries, if some need retraining, retracting, refuting—or reviving.
But beware: Lent is not for our self-absorption or flagellation, which can be yet another form of narcissism, of pride, of conceit. The work is not a spotlight on ourselves, much less a despairing obsession with our own failings. It is the work of triangulating our attention, in alignment with and yoked to the Work of the Spirit, in a world that has forgotten its origin, its promise, its purpose.
Lenten observance is simply the recognition, followed by corrective measures, that pipes can get clogged; moving parts need lubrication; rust begins to corrode; bodies, in need of medical intervention; cracks exposed and rot replaced.
Remembering that you are dust is not an insult, for such is the very stuff of the universe, ordered and animated in God’s own delight. Do not grovel! Simply allow your compass to be adjusted, as needed.
We all need helpful hints on how Lent’s labor can be carried out. There are many—none are foolproof. What follows are some suggested questions to ponder in your own solitude or in conversation with others. Asking the right question is often essential to arriving at the right answer. You may not find what you need here, but in considering them, you might formulate your own.
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Penitential unveiling. “. . . the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation / to the next, as in a relay race: / the baton never falls.” —Israeli poet Yeduda Amichai
Hymn of confession. “Why? – For Gaza.” —Annie Lennox
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In the struggle for a Beloved Community—forged in the grip of grace, penitential posture, joyful refrain, undergirded by a vision of time beyond animosity, all done in reverential awe of the Blessed One, of the Way of Jesus, powered and sustained by the Holy Spirit—ponder the following questions.
1. Can we be faithful without becoming arrogant?
2. Can we be generous without recreating relations of control and manipulation on the one hand and dependency and 
servility on the other?
3. Can we be compassionate without seeking publicity?
4. Can we be patient without becoming passive?
5. Can we be angry without becoming vengeful?
6. Can we become agents of meaningful change without becoming brokers of imposition?
7. Can we be hopeful without being sentimental?
8. Can we weep with those who weep while also rejoicing with those who rejoice?
9. Can we offer forgiveness without ignoring the need for repairing harmed relations?
10. Can we count our blessings that are not the result of wealth or other privilege?
11. When all is said and done, is more said than done?
12. Can we think of mercy as the mechanism that reconciles the demands of justice with the prerequisites of peace?
13. Can we be prophetic without becoming sanctimonious?
14. Can we prioritize the needs of the poor without romanticizing poverty?
15. Can we excavate the root causes of violence in the world while also doing that work in our own hearts and minds?
16. Can we offer pardon without collecting IOUs?
17. Can we engage those who differ from us without becoming antagonistic?
18. Can we be joyful without being triumphalist?
19. Can we tearfully express our grief and anguish without languishing in the solitude of lethargy and indolence?
20. Can we pledge ourselves to faithful communities without becoming tribal, insular, or sectarian?
21. Can we recognize that in leaving “Egypt” behind, we also have to dethrone the lingering presence of “Pharaoh” within our own hearts.
22. Can we rediscover God’s passion for the flourishing of the natural world—see ourselves as located within, not dominating from without—thereby recognizing our need for repentance and turn toward repairing and protecting the created order?
23. Can we discern the different but connected needs of providing emergency aid to the suffering as well as the need for 
opposition to policies which make charity necessary? Engaging in the charitable work of binding wounds, providing shelter and adequate clothing and nutrition and health care—but also deconstructing and reconstructing structures and policies which are the root cause of such deprivations?
24. Can our hands and feet be deployed in the work of resistance to injustice without resorting to clinched fists or trampling boots? To guard against becoming beastly in our struggle with beasts?
25. Can we be “still”—embraced by grace that generates calmness in the midst of torrents—without becoming indifferent or listless?
26. Can we publicly, even vociferously, demand public justice without becoming self-righteous?
27. Can we affirm that God is more taken with the agony of the Earth than with the ecstasy of Heaven—employing that affirmation as a plumb line to appraise all that we do and say and think?
28. Can we think of ourselves less rather than thinking less of ourselves?
29. Acknowledging we all have blind spots, unexamined presumptions, privileges of which we are unaware (especially those of us in the majority caste), how can we open ourselves to experiences which might expose our privileges—not for punishment but for reparation, for the growth of our understanding and the stretching of our hearts?
30. Can we conceive of the “good life” for ourselves as that life extending to an ever-widening circle of kinship?
31. Can we imagine that in our revolt against an economic system, which centers human greed, we need to do the hard work of imagining and constructing a new system which centers human need?
32. Can the passion we bring to the work of prayer become the compost that nurtures a life in pursuit of the Beloved Community; and bring both the joy and grief of that pursuit into the conduit of our prayer life?
33. Can we revive the conviction that faith in the Manner of Jesus entails a bet-your-assets commitment—that following Jesus is different from admiring him?
34. In the midst of interpersonal conflict, can we be truthful without becoming vindictive? Accept a criticism of ourselves without holding a grudge?
35. Can we get to the point of understanding there is no sacred and secular, only sacred and desecrated?
36. Do we have the needed imagination to affirm that one day all shall go out in joy and be led back in peace, the mountains bursting in song, the trees in applause? (cf. Isaiah 55:12)
37. How can we shape our communities of conviction so that pastoral work is not segregated from prophetic engagement (and vice versa)?
38. Is our faith buoyant enough to withstand squalls of doubt? (They will come.) Our hope, resilient enough to endure seasons of despair? (Those storms will arrive, sometimes without warning.) Our love, sufficiently robust to survive contagions of anger and resentment? (Infections are common.)
39. Can we be confessional without being colonial, living confidently (though nimbly) in the coherence of our faith tradition, without demanding that others, even our collaborators in the work toward a Beloved Community, adopt our identity?
40. How best can we adopt this pastoral advice from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. Just keep moving forward”? (In the end, that is all we are asked.)
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Benediction. “In times of darkness, tend your fire: it will give light until the morning.” —St. Brigid of Kildare
Postlude. “Bella Ciao.” —Rana Choir, made up of Arab and Jewish women singing in Farsi, Hebrew, and Arabic, recorded as a gesture of solidarity with the courageous women in Iran
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