an expert's guide to lent
you might want to write this down...
Around the pizza Friday dinner table were the usual suspects: our small family and our buddy Karsten. Karsten is a great guy who we’ve known since he was 16. He’s 23 and works harder than anyone I know. He lets Sam crawl all over him and tonight, he brought Sam a calendar with a new tractor for each month. Needless to say Karsten has a standing invitation to pizza Friday and we like it that way.
We four sat around the dinner table with Costco deep dish and while Sam watched Bluey, the adults hunkered down around David’s iPhone and watched the SNL clip where Kate McKinnon talks about her less than pleasant experience being abducted by aliens. Ryan Gosling is the guest star and he’s a mess by mid-skit as Kate discusses how the aliens messed with her “knockers” all while sucking on a fake cigarette. Karsten had never seen this skit but David and I laughed just as hard as he did, even though we’ve seen it at least ten times. Minutes before this moment, we had all bowed our heads to pray and Sam, through a squinted eye said “Dear Lord, thank you for this blessing–AMEN!” and we thought that was pretty apropos.
This Wednesday is both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. If you’re a big fan of order, this collision of chocolate and memento mori might screw you up. Personally I’ve never been one for Valentine’s Day and that didn’t change when I got married (much to the delight of David). But I can’t help but chuckle that these two days, both important in their own right, are colliding on the Gregorian calendar. Obviously Ash Wednesday is going to trump the feast of St. Valentine (you can always celebrate it early on Monday if that’s your thing), but for the type A church do-gooder, I can only imagine their liturgical panties being in a tight twist over this.
That same person is also going to be unnerved by my Costco pizza, the iPad propped in front of my toddler, the use of a *gasp* second screen to watch an off-color comedy sketch at the same table as the toddler. And they’ll definitely fall out of their chair by my referencing their liturgical panties. I probably just killed them, having now said it a second time.
*Let us now have a moment of silence for those who just died reading this Substack*
I don’t know much but I do know that since I started observing Lent, I have done a darn good job at failing at it. There are three main components of this penitential season: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. For all my striving, I have yet to have a “successful” Lent. My spiritual practices have resembled a chipmunk storing nuts in its cheeks. I see them, I store them, I run away and try to make something out of what I now have, just to stuff them under a mossy spot in my chipmunk hovel and go about freaking out about something else. And then, of course, in comes the shame. And year after year, the beat goes on.
So this year, I’m doing it messy. The fact is that my family has been in the Lenten season for fucking YEARS now, and as Mary Oliver instructed, I am tired of walking on my knees for a hundred miles in the desert to be considered “good”. I have no interest in it. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Go ahead, clutch your pearls. I’ve thrown mine to the pigs.
This year I am going to do my damndest to love my neighbor and I’m sure that I’m going to suck at it. Recently I watched as a homeless man and his leashed dog were berated from across the street by a woman who was also walking her leashed dog. Something about “don’t you let that dog get near me, he almost attacked me last time, I’ll call the GD cops” and some such nonsense. Sam looked up at me with wide eyes and said “Mama, is that lady a ‘hard time’ lady?” You have to understand that in our family, when we encounter the homeless, we have said that these folks are having a “hard time”. It’s glossing over a bigger issue, but as Sam is three, this is the best we can currently offer him. But at this moment, Sam looked at the affluent woman walking her perfectly groomed dog and thought that she was the one who was having a hard time. He wasn’t wrong. Love thy neighbor–even the unhoused one with the loud dog. Or not.
Obviously the title is clickbait. I’m no expert at Lent. No more than that grouchy woman with her floofy dog. And that’s ok. Maybe she was having a hard time. Maybe that entire street corner was having a hard time in ways that were visible and invisible. Maybe it’s ok to do Lent messy since life is messy. By Easter, God makes the biggest, scariest thing of all a joke. Death becomes a big “GOTCHA!” from the Almighty.
You thought I was dead? Nah, son. It was the ole hocus pocus–now you see me, now you don’t, now you do again! Alakazam!
Obviously I’m making light of the greatest blessing and mystery that has ever been given to humanity, but just like you hold your breath when a magician saws his lovely assistant in half, so do we hold ours during all of Lent. The relief of Easter is real. The assistant is ok and He is risen. Alleluia indeed.
I’m a big believer in spiritual practices, but I haven’t always been a believer in grace. I said I was, but I could never allow myself to have it. But I’m learning to. I’m learning to laugh when the bread burns, to breathe throw the 45 minute tantrum, and to let it all shake out how it’s going to shake out. Because if death has been conquered, then there’s gotta be grace for me having not yet perfected my Lenten practice.
…
Earlier this week after hours of dysregulation, I ran an errand to the grocery store and killed time afterward driving through different parts of the city so as to not disturb Sam’s bedtime rituals. At one point, before heading home, I pulled up Vertical Horizon’s “You’re a god” and cranked the volume until my steering wheel vibrated. Suddenly I was 17 again, driving my Toyota Camry to after school play practice with a Sonic cherry limeade riding shotgun. I laughed at how nostalgic those lyrics made me feel and at how different the scene was now. 21 years later, I was driving back home where my husband was tucking in our son. This time I was rolling deep with a kombucha and broccoli crowns in the backseat—maybe a little less sexy, but I was feeling blessed. Blessed to live this messy, hard, ridiculous life knowing that when I walk into the darkness, I’ll bump into walls. 17 year old Emily thought being late to play practice was a capital offense. 17 year old Emily would want 38 year old Emily to be following Lent by the letter. It’s ok teenage Emily. It’s ok to occasionally let your kid watch TV at the dinner table, to not take a shower daily, to have a dirty house. It’s ok to occasionally miss church, because when you’re 38 you’ll understand the meaning of ‘Sabbath’ a little better and you’ll see that there’s a lot of grace built in. It’s ok to not get it all right.
This Lent, it’s likely that I’ll be penitential with pizza stains. I’ll try, but if praying over a sink full of dishes is the best I can do, that’s ok.
Always,
Emily
P.S. In case you were wondering, Matt Scannell of Vertical Horizon is still rocking the tiny soul patch–it’s just grey now. You’re welcome.