Lent is a Season to Tend Our Hollowness

2 Corinthians 4:7, "But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us."

Lent is a tough season in the liturgical calendar. It is a time for preparation, which means that it is a time for spiritual discipline. Lenten discipline rests on three pillars: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which I have come to understand as all variations of fasting. Prayer is a fasting from the ego. Almsgiving a fasting from holding on.

Lent arrives like salt in the wound during pandemic-time. Our collective series of lock-downs, quarantines, and isolations over the last two years have been an unavoidable and necessary time of fasting. We fasted from showing up, eating out, paid work, vacations, parties, hugs, and growing friendships or networks. We fasted from variety itself. We fasted from charting and anticipating the future. Whether we had gravitated toward this spiritual practice in the past, we were all shoved into the deep end. Click here to read the rest of the article at Fidelia Magazine, a digital publication of Young Clergy Women International where I am a Writer-in-Residence.