Including 35 questions for contemplative attention
Ken Sehested
Invocation. “Tempted and tried we’re oft made to wonder why it should be thus all the day long / While there are others living about us, never molested, though in the wrong. . . . / Farther along we’ll know all about it; farther along we’ll understand why / Cheer up, my brother; live in the sunshine, we’ll understand it all by and by.” —“Farther Along,” Dolly Parton
§ § §
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 appear on metal; 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.
§ § §
Hymn of petition. “You who went before us, / furthest into the unease, / help us to find you, / Lord, in the darkness.” —English translation to the first stanza of the Swedish hymn, “Du som gick före oss, (Psalm 74)” performed by Voces8
§ § §
35 questions for contemplative attention
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.
- Can we be faithful without becoming arrogant
- Can we be generous without recreating relations of control and manipulation on the one hand and dependency and servility on the other?
- Can we be compassionate without seeking publicity?
- Can we be patient without becoming passive?
- Can we be angry without becoming vengeful?
- Can we become agents of reform without becoming brokers of imposition?
- Can we be hopeful without being sentimental?
- Can we weep with those who weep while also rejoicing with those who rejoice
- Can we offer mercy without ignoring the need for repairing harmed relations?
- Can we act kindly without becoming passive aggressive?
- Can we be prophetic without becoming merciless?
- Can we publicly, even vociferously, demand public justice without becoming self-righteous?
- Can we excavate the root causes of violence in the world while also doing that work in our own hearts and minds?
- Can we be forgiving without collecting IOUs?
- Can we perceive the connection between our efforts at disarming the nations with the work of disarming the human heart?
- Can we be joyful without being triumphalist?
- Can we tearfully express our grief and anguish without languishing in the solitude of lethargy and indolence?
- Can we pledge ourselves to faithful communities without allowing such vows to be transfigured into mobbish, nativist, or insular conduct?
- Can we recognize that in leaving “Egypt” behind, we also have to dethrone the lingering presence of “Pharaoh” within our own hearts.
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- Can we be “still”—embraced by grace that generates calmness in the midst of torrents—without becoming indifferent?
- 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?
- Can we think of ourselves less rather than thinking less of ourselves?
- 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?
- Can we conceive of the “good life” for ourselves as that life extending to an ever-widening circle of kinship?
- 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?
- Can we revive the conviction that faith in the Manner of Jesus entails a bet-your-assets commitment.
- Can we get to the point of understanding there is no sacred and secular, only sacred and desecrated?
- 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).
- How can we shape our communities of conviction so that pastoral work is not segregated from prophetic engagement (and vice versa)?
- 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.)
- Can we be confessional without being colonial? Might digging deeper into our specific tradition of faith—its history, its language, its insights—be more successful than neutering ourselves? And can we do this without demanding that others, even our collaborators in the work toward a Beloved Community, adopt our identity?
- 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 all we are asked.
§ § §
Benediction. “All this pain / I wonder if I’ll ever find my way / I wonder if my life could really change at all / All this earth / Could all that is lost ever be found / Could a garden come up from this ground at all? / You make beautiful things / You make beautiful things out of the dust / You make beautiful things / You make beautiful things out of us.” —“Beautiful Things,” Gungor
# # #
