Not about me

This Lent, I'm reading Maggi Dawn's Giving it up. She recalls us to community in our Lenten disciplines.

This meditation, written last year at the beginning of Lent had a similar theme. It's not about the small stuff that makes me feel better - but about the things that enhance community and communion with God and with each other:

Chocolate or wine

Chocolate or wine?

Wine or chocolate?

Which should I renounce?

Or should I really push the boat out and renounce both?

I mean it is only for 6 weeks

Even I could manage that

And I’d emerge smug and self righteous

My halo extra shiny

After being so self denying

I mean that’s going to make all the difference, isn’t it?

That will really change the world

If I indulge my lack of self indulgence

Besides, I’d probably lose about 20 pounds too

A new figure and a shiny soul

Not to be sneered at.

Is that what its come to?

Is that what its all about

Giving up and then self- congratulating

That’s what God surely wants

No, its what God demands

That we all make ourselves miserable and short tempered

and renounce all our coping mechanisms for 6 weeks

so that we too can emerge again from our self imposed tombs

all the better for our “suffering”

God help us when we trivialise sacrifice.

When we dare to imagine that a little self denial

Helps us identify with love in its extremity.

God, the last word in party excuses

Who came up with every reason ever invented to party

Must shrivel and die

When confronted with our pathetic attempts at Lent

Repentance occasions rejoicing

So why do we fail so miserably to capture that

Life giving season

Why do we make a drudgery

Of something beautiful-

getting ready to celebrate such love

and being transformed by such life.

Chocolate?

Wine?

How about throwing our all into love?