The Long Lent Continues

 Ash Wednesday, 2021. 

It is a hard time, a hard week here in Houston. On top of the political battles, the racial tension, and the pandemic, a polar vortex swooped into Texas and broke our delicate infrastructure. It's not enough that it got cold but millions have been without electricity and water. Today, the temperature rose enough above freezing that frozen water pipes across the city shared their secret cracks and breaks. One friend posted on Facebook that she was in the dark, cold, no running water, and now with wet carpet. I don't want to say this is the worst misery a human can endure, because it's not, but it's pretty miserable all the same. 

And so this is where we begin lent this year. 

Of course, I contend we never ended lent last year. Not really. I've called the whole last year the Long Lent. I'm disappointed it hasn't caught on, to be honest, but I can see why no one wants to claim that. Nonetheless, I stand by my naming. 

I feel perverse in that I've always loved lent. That's not true. I don't feel perverse about it, but it feels perverse to admit it this year. This quiet, introspective, somber time fits me in ways that Christmas doesn't. 

But it is getting a bit much, isn't it? 

No ashes this year, but I don't have a great attachment to that ritual, oddly enough. I didn't grow up with it. In my rural Lutheran upbringing, ashes were something the Roman Catholics did. I was an adult, in college, before I experienced it and it was about that time that more Lutherans adopted the practice. I've never turned it down, but it is not necessary for my start of lent. 

I've received the Eucharist once since last March. If you want to talk about rituals to miss, that's the one I miss. 

But I've been without ritual for most of this time. At least communal ritual. I'm not sure what ritual means when it's alone. It's not useless, of course, but as much of a hermit as I can be (and the pandemic has reinforced my hermit tendencies), I mostly find meaning in ritual in community. 

And all this has had me pondering the last year, the last 11 months without it. I am lost and I am not. I feel like I've been weathering the pandemic better than some, and I know I'm not doing as well as I might. I wonder where I might be if I could only gather with others around the sacrament. 

I've been thinking about the liturgical line (taken from scripture) about "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." We claim some salvific efficacy in Christ's sacrifice. I've been thinking about the ways that we have been sacrificing our gathered rituals for the salvation of our neighbors. 

In this season of The Long Lent, we've been abstaining from the Eucharist. What a practice in self-denial, to keep away from the sustaining sacrament! 

But I contend it is necessary. As weary as I grow in this long abstinence, I know it is right. Other people across the centuries have been without the Eucharist and Christian fellowship before. (See Bonhoeffer, LIfe Together.) I have been and continue to claim my solidarity with, indeed my shared baptism with those saints. 

The Long Lent continues. We grow weary and we miss receiving ashes and all the other rituals. 

Let us endure for the sake of one another. It is an abstinence endured for one another.