Lent 2008
Here are just a few rambling thoughts on our Lenten practice this year. The gospel reading for the First Sunday of lent in the Common Lectionary speaks of Jesus being driven into the desert by the Spirit.
That word 'desert' brought to mind the recent 'Extreme Dreams' programme with Ben Fogle taking a small group on an expedition in the Sahara desert in Libya. The horrendously challenging environment was desolate, and totally merciless to those who entered it.
The desert also in the time of writing the gospels was in Mediterranean culture see as the place of the evil spirits and Jesus was sent by the good spirit into that formidable territory to be tested [that is what the Greek word means]. So Jesus is to be tested three times challenging his attachment to possessions, power and prestige. These are the three archetypical attachments of the ego or false, superficial materialistic self that overlays our own true nature. Jesus like a good Bodhisattva in the Buddhist tradition is driven by the spirit to engage in a spiritual encounter that he might discover his [original face before his parents were born as the Buddhists say] or in our terms his true nature that was spoken by the Spirit at his Baptism just before entering the Desert. That which he heard from 'outside' he had to discover and embrace out of his own 'inner' self - his own true nature.
St Anthony's entry into the desert as described by Athanasius is to engage in the same test and again he wages the battle described in a most graphic way but it really is a profound spiritual and psychological struggle to touch and own his 'own true nature.'
One further image that came to me was that of seeing in India the pilgrimages of penitents who came naked and totally covered in ash to the Hindu temple. [No small mark of ash like our Ash Wednesday - this was the full treatment!!]. The threefold pillars of the Judeo-Christian prayer life of prayer, fasting, giving then seems to be a spiritual stripping naked - like the Indians - to let go of the accretions that we 'think' is our identity to discover our own true nature. The ash reminds us of our true physical nature as nothing but 'star-dust.'
This Lent then is an engagement in an intense desert-like spiritual practice that will uncover our true nature so let us not trivialize it in any way at all but really enter into it with confidence, courage and joy [that was something I also learnt from the Indian penitents - their faces were all lit up with the loveliest of smiles!].
