On the eve of Lent..

by John Forman

I sat down to write this on Mardi Gras. Well, having spent the evening with my daughters watching an old Star Trek, I can’t really call it a “Fat” Tuesday…more of a chubby Tuesday or maybe a Tuesday who occasionally uses food as an emotional crutch…much like the excess of boyish enthusiasm spilling over my beltline these days.

I guess it came closer to a “carnival”, from the Latin “carne evil,” meaning “the meat’s gone off, so let’s not eat it for a month.” We now, of course, more generously translate the phrase to mean “goodbye to flesh,” in recognition of the traditional practices of dieting (although this Lent is so soon in the year that I haven’t even had time to finish procrastinating on my New Year’s resolution) or the omission of meat from one’s diet.

Now because we live in a largely Asian neighborhood, we’ve incorporated local customs into our own. So, for example, in recognition of the concurrent Chinese New Year – the Year of the Rat – we have sharply curtailed the consumption of all rodents for the entire Lenten season…a practice I have high hopes will stick with us substantially longer.

I grew up, like many people who survived childhood, thinking that Lent was primarily about giving up those things which brought you the greatest joy…chocolate, gin, jazz and hanging around with people of questionable moral fiber, such as clergy. Until, that is, I met a priest who shall remain nameless – although his initials are “Charles Ridge” – who taught me an entirely new way of thinking about Lent.

As we sat merrily doing our rosary with hot coals strung on barbed wire and trading fleas for our hair shirts, Charles also managed to introduce to me the deeper meaning and opportunity of Lent. In all seriousness, it has become a time of increasingly profound joy for me. What Chuck taught me over the course of several years was that it isn’t the things, events or people themselves so much as it’s the reshaping of our relationship to them that we undertake in Lent.

It’s a lightening of the load as we run toward God…a readjustment of our response to the first great commandment. Have we put God first among all our relationships? Do we love God with all our strength, all our minds, all our hearts and all our souls or are there one or two things that have slipped up the priority list for our time, attention and energy?

I was doing some reflection last week on our recent Foundations course on Forgiveness and preparing for Lent (as a Benedictine oblate, I am required to submit my intended Lenten practices to my Abbot each year for his approval). I found one or two encumbrances…situations with two people that I had not yet fully reconciled so that they could take their proper place as lesser than my relationship to God. To that end, I found and adopted a prayer, which I’ll be praying daily on their behalf (and for my own softening and growth) as a part of my Lenten practices. I’ve already sent it to Chalice, our prayer team, but I’ll share it here with you in the hopes that it may be useful to you as well:

“May you be happy
May you be free.
May you be loving.
May you be loved.
May God bring you to the fullest completion that God’s love calls you.
May every fiber of your being resonate to the glory to which God calls you.
May you experience the fullness of peace in body and soul.
May you know God in all God’s goodness.
May you forgive every transgression.
May I forgive you with all my heart and soul.
May you know what it means to be a child of God.
May you experience the glory of possessing the kingdom of God.
May you walk in peace and fellowship with all God’s creatures.
May every blessing be yours.
May goodness and love show themselves in everything that you do and in all that is done to you.

May you be one with all of God’s creation.
May you experience the blessings of God’s grace for all eternity.”

A blessed Lenten season to you all!

John Forman is a member of St Paul’s who serves at the altar, leads St. Paul’s intercessory prayer team and is a Eucharistic Visitor. Outside of St. Paul's he is a Benedictine oblate of Mt Angel Abbey and an organizational development consultant and executive counselor. John is the managing partner of Integral Development Associates.

To Dust You Shall Return

by Stephen Crippen

I look at Ash Wednesday as a kind of self-absorbed Day of the Dead, or an All Souls Day that’s focused mostly on me. I’m dead, or at least I’m dying. And not just dead or dying in a spiritual way—dying to sin, or dying to a way of life that diminishes me or harms others. I have all of Lent to focus on those deaths. No, Ash Wednesday for me is a day to say, I am someday (2065? Next year? Tomorrow?) going to be dead. My body will cool, stiffen, soften, be consumed by Mother Earth or Father Fire, better get my will ready.

So my first book for Lent this year is “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” by Mary Roach. She’s a journalist, and she approaches the topic with a great blend of thorough professionalism and funny irreverence. And right there in the first chapter is a great Ash Wednesday story. Roach is visiting a medical lab in which plastic-surgery students are practicing surgery techniques using the severed heads of cadavers. Roach is talking to one of the students, named Marilena:

“I ask Marilena if she plans to donate her remains. I have always assumed that a sense of reciprocity prompts doctors to donate—repayment for the generosity of the people they dissected in medical school. Marilena, for one, isn’t going to. She cites a lack of respect. It surprises me to hear her say this. As far as I can tell, the heads are being treated [by her classmates] with respect. I hear no joking or laughter or callous comments…”

Marilena tells the author that she objects to her colleagues’ assumption that it’s okay to photograph the cadavers for journals and research. Since the people who once inhabited these bodies are gone, they can’t sign a release for the photos to be taken, and this is what Marilena finds disrespectful. Roach continues:

“The seminar is nearly over. The video monitors are blank and the surgeons are cleaning up and filing out into the hallway. Marilena replaces the white cloth on her cadaver’s face; about half the surgeons do this. She is conscientiously respectful. When I asked her why the eyes of the dead woman had no pupils, she did not answer, but reached up and closed the eyelids. As she slides back her chair, she looks down at the benapkined form and says, ‘May she rest in peace.’ I hear it as ‘pieces,’ but that’s just me.”

The Irishman in me smiled at the author’s play on words, but I really like Marilena. I hope that when it’s my body’s turn to be a research subject, it will be handled by someone like her. And I hope that by keeping Ash Wednesday and walking through Lent each year, I can become more and more like her, more and more the kind of person who remembers to replace a white cloth over the sacred remains of another human being.


Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog on his website, here.