Lent tugs at the loose fibers of our faith. Regardless of religious belief or denomination or spiritual season, it causes us to look death in the eye. In part, because lent occurs before spring has really sprung in the West. Here, winters watery edges slowly leak into our minds. Saturate our souls. We walk around with the bottoms of our pants sopping-wet, moisture wicking up the front and the back. It’s uncomfortable, this against-the-grain space where possibilities often go unseen.
I mean, will my pants actually dry today? Or must I traverse my workday just like this?
In this body, there will be trouble. Some of it the chafing type of wet pants on dry skin. But there are bigger troubles, too. The unanswered questions. So many unanswered questions. Especially for those/we who give care.
Because to give care is to know death most intimately.
We see it as our routines die, now quite impossible in the face of others high, high needs. We see it in the brain fog. The things we once could rattle off at a moments notice, we cannot any longer. We see it in the wear and tear of our bodies, where we hold these deaths and those of every soul we meet. The endings of relationships, careers, seasons. The demise of the blanket our grandmother knit. It’s now unraveled. The chipped heirloom plate that will not bear another crumb. The apartment contract that has come to a close.
This season doesn’t whisper of potential, beloved. In fact, it is almost-entirely silent of it. And so, we have a choice. We either enter into the wide-open void and embrace the nothingness… or we reject it and thus, our souls keep score.
Death is important and wise.
Do you agree?
Lessons
I spent the first 25-plus years of my life enduring the cold, dark winters of the Northeast. Giant firs covered in snow side-by-side with emerging crocus were precise arguments that sorrow and joy co-exist. That death does not really and truly ever officially win. Now a desert-dweller, it’s harder to sit in this space between. It is never quite winter here. The leaves on most trees never drop. The one’s in my own yard stay green and stay green and sometimes produce fruit even in winter and continue to stay green. I haven’t found the same lessons here.
Thank God for the winter I already knew.
It sounds strange, since I intentionally left it. What felt like endless suffering in a body that knew pain from the cold.
And yet, God chose a body. Chose to experience deep suffering. Was invited to be plucked off this earth in a more awful fashion than most/all of us would willingly endure. It makes me think that God might have chosen winter, too. Thanked themselves, the Universe, for it.
We are a people who continually choose ease, darling soul. Who wait patiently for it. Who mark the days without it, because the doctor said so or for personal affirmation and need. Who no longer sit with idle hands; force seeds into frozen soil some days. This must happen, we say. This must grow.
But in a caregiving body, do we not yet know nothing can be forced? That everything has a season? That death is our teacher and suffering an often unwelcome yet uniting force?
I know the discomfort. Yet, these are the things I will think about this Lent. Will speak of, too. With reverence and awe, of course. With tenderness, that we are human. With hope that we experience the present moment more than any other. Even if it’s awful. Even if it’s winter. Even if it’s hard.
The sun does rise again.
As do we.
Squeezes,
J. 🌻 @thebarefootpreacher
Feel free to share this Lenten in a Caregiving Body contemplation with a friend, precious soul. It might just change a life.
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