The Year of Living Rhythmically: #1
February 25, 2009
Today is Ash Wednesday the beginning of the Lenten season where we carefully begin to review our lives in relationship to God for the sake of growing in repentance.
We frequently discuss the concept of Sacred Rhythm in these pages. Our focus is almost always upon the idea of Sacred Rhythm as it relates to our daily practices of prayer. But this sacred rhythm also applies to the seasons of the year. Through Christ’s resurrection we can now redeem time.
This redemption of time, which we see take place through various sacred rhythms, is bluntly expressed on a day like today. Smudging ash on our foreheads in the shape of the cross and quietly reminding one another: From dust you have come and to dust you shall return.
We are frail and fruitless. Any life we have is what we receive from God. Whatever good we do in this world is a ricochet of God’s grace bouncing off of us only to bless others.
A year of living rhythmically includes observing, as most Christians have done for centuries, the seasons of the Christian year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost. Each season either anticipates Christ’s coming or dramatically relives a part of Christ’s life. Christmas, Pentecost and Easter are seasons of celebration. Lent is a season of repentance, reflection and fasting. A season of intentional sadness.
Christians are naturally buoyant. This maybe why Lent has been prescribed as a corporate discipline throughout the ages. We love the resurrection too much. Though a season of sadness it is not a sadness without hope. It is a sadness of preparation. After our season of sadness comes our greatest season of joy…
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Great thoughts Paul. Personally, I love trying to follow the Liturgical year. Somehow it serves to “ground” me. It helps me know where I am and who I am. It provides a story for me to inhabit. I only wish more of my Christian brothers and sisters were more aware of this annual sacred rhythm. I think we all tend to follow a rhythm, it is just a matter of which one. For too many of us, Advent has been replaced with Thanksgiving, Christmas has been perverted, Epiphany is gobbled up by the Super Bowl, Lent is replaced March Madness, while Easter competes with the “first pitch” and Pentecost is consumed with spring fever and making plans for summer vacation. It is no wonder we (the broader Christian community) has lost our voice. We are no longer following a “counter-script.”
I know this is not true for all of us, but I fear it is the case for too many.
Edifying thoughts Paul and Jaime. Only this way of life gives us the foundation for eliminating hurry from our lives, and busyness from our ministries.
Leighton Ford wrote the Attentive Life. He also takes Sacred Rhythm to another level from daily, to yearly, to life. Hence, morning is for early in life, … or for seasons of life, etc…
For many years I would be ambushed by Easter. In the churches I attended we may give some attention to Palm Sunday but Easter still seemed to take us by surprise. The most important day in our Christian year and we weren’t ready for it.