“You recall those times,I know you do, when the sun
lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face,
when a parched day finally broke open, real rain
sluicing down the sidewalk, rattling city maples
and you so sure the end was here, life a house of cards
tipped over, falling, hope’s last breath extinguished
in a bitter wind. Oh, friend, search your memory again-
beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping.
~Molly Fisk

For those of us who make our home in the Christian household, the season of Lent paid another visit beginning last Wednesday. It is a season that is not always a welcome guest. Depending on the brand or branch of this tradition in which you were raised or find yourself, it can be forty days of deprivation, penance, furrowed brows, resignation, or all manner of soul dampening things. We so often forget that these days we have infused with often misplaced theology really gets its beginnings in the word ‘lecten’, an Old English word meaning ‘lenghten’ and referred to the season of spring. And when spring arrives, and the days lengthen, we experience that amazing gift of…light, more light. 

And aren’t we all hungering for that? Because the fact is this Lent could be shaping up to be the lentiest Lent. I don’t know if that is a word, in fact I am sure it is not, but it is the thought that keeps coming to me. I may have thought something similar last year when the isolation, deaths, and illnesses that surrounded us had no end in sight. While some of that reality is still with us, now we are confronted with a war that is evil and unjust and has most thinking people wondering what can possibility happen next. 

All this may just be why a season like Lent has continued and stood the test of all these years. Marking Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness and the temptations endured on the journey toward Easter are meant to help us mark our own forty days in our own lives. Our own hope of having the light lengthen into something brighter and more hopeful than where we are right now is important work and life-giving work. Spending some time with this notion of ‘lengthening light’ has had me watching for ways in which the sheer goodness of light emerges and is helping me see what this Lent may have to teach. 

Light comes in so many forms. There is, of course, the pinnacle of Light, the Sun. And there are those actual rays of light that have begun to melt some of the ice and snow that is stacked in our yards and have encrusted our spirit. And there is the light that bursts forth in our hearts when we hear good music or read a turn of phrase that seems filled with a light of knowing coming from another world. There is also the light that happens when friends family speak with laughter and understanding. There is even the light of silence that can hold us when the words of the evening news threatens to darken our tender, fragile souls. 

The poet says: “You recall those times,I know you do, when the sun lifted its weight over a small rise to warm your face, when a parched day finally broke open…Oh, friend, search your memory again-beauty and relief are still there, only sleeping.” In these days, these lentiest of days, life does seem “a house of cards tipped over, falling, hope’s last breath extinguished in a bitter wind.” 

But as those who have the ability to recall, may we find the courage to embrace the beauty and strength of the sunflower, the national flower of Ukraine, lifting our faces toward the light, standing tall in resistance and power. May we mirror the resilience we see on the faces of those who flee and have been forced to fight.  Lent…lecten…lengthen…light. May we awaken what is only sleeping and have the grace to find our way toward a brighter time.