Last spring, when COVID was closing down the world as I had always known it, I was up in the Kentucky mountains. Up on the ridge, where I was staying, signs of emerging life were all around. Birds made lots of birds-in-spring noise. A young squirrel, born in the winter, learned to jump from limb to limb of the still bare trees. Little streams rushed down to the river all over the woods with soft sounds of emerging life. The world was still brown and gray, but sprigs of tiny feather grass were coloring it with hints of green in sunny corners.
Being surrounded by that spring comforted me then. It was very clear that, in the woods, God was creating new life as God has done since the beginning. God was creating new life in the woods, no matter what was going on in our cities, homes, and hospitals.
Genesis
Beginning today, through next Tuesday, we spend a little time in the first chapters of Genesis. The word “genesis” means the origin or formation of something. The book of Genesis tells the stories of God’s beginnings of relationship with earth and humanity. That relationship began as God formed the world. God created—and saw that his creation was good.
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
Then God said,
“Let there be light,” and there was light.
God saw how good the light was.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
Thus evening came, and morning followed–the first day.
As God saw how good his creation was, he kept creating. Tomorrow and Wednesday we will have the two stories of how God created people “in his image” to “have dominion” over the earth and its creatures which he had created.
I especially love hearing the Genesis creation stories as part of the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night. “And God saw how good it was,” “and God saw how good it was,” it says six times. The light was good. The separation of water and land was good. All living creatures, rain and sun, day and night—all were good.
On Holy Saturday night at the Vigil, we quickly move through the whole history of the Jewish people to tell the story of everything up until God’s new beginning with Christ. Because, as we will see by Friday, goodness was not the whole story in the beginning. Because God also created freedom for humans, so that we might be able to choose to love as God loves, we also have sin and death, evil and hardship in our world. Each of us, throughout history, has been free to choose the goodness of God’s way–or not.
This Week, Thinking about Beginning Again
In Kentucky, as COVID vaccines are becoming available (teachers were among the first vaccinated), children are returning to schools this week in a hybrid format—basically, half the children are at school on any given day. My home responsibilities will be much less. Also this week, I will finish a major writing project.
For the first time since last March, there will be substantial flexibility for how I use time. Hmm. Just in time for Lent.
Lent is a time for new beginnings. While I will be relieved of many of my “COVID-time” responsibilities, my local church, outside of sacraments and worship, is still operating via zoom and website. In person ministry responsibilities will most likely be on hold until well into the Easter season—maybe longer.
Lent this year can be a fervent, fallow time. A time to pause before new activity growth starts—even as nature comes alive in the Northern temperate regions as it always has, back to the days of Genesis. I can have a time to reflect and consider: What am I learning in the COVID time? What do I need to include from that learning as I again can freely choose how I spend my time and talents?
40 Stones and Fratelli Tutti
A new bulletin board visual has replaced my Christmas Kerygma tree. I call it 40 Stones, because there are 40 paper stones around its perimeter. They represent what it seems to me God has revealed about what is His plan for living in His goodness: the 10 Commandments, 10 additional standards from the Sermon on the Mount, 10 core concepts of the Rule of St. Benedict by which I live as a Benedictine Oblate, and 10 Principles of Catholic Social Teaching. In the middle is a Benedictine cross representing my life as I live it: prayer and community, writing/teaching and acts of service. Across the very middle is a picture of the parable of the Sower and the Seed.
This visual represents where the COVID time has brought me thus far: to a strong awareness that God calls me to live by ALL these building blocks of the Kingdom of God and of personal holiness. I’m honestly not sure where 40 Stones will lead me. At the moment, it is leading me to a prayerful reading of the part of the Catholic Catechism on the 10 Commandments. How do I better match my life to them? How might they convert me?
At the same time, this Lent I will lead a zoom study of Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti, his encyclical from last fall which says in its introduction, “by acknowledging the dignity of each human person, we can contribute to the rebirth of a universal aspiration to fraternity. Brotherhood between all men and women….No one can face life in isolation. We need a community that supports and helps us, in which we can help one another to keep looking ahead. How important it is to dream together. By ourselves, we risk mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together. Let us dream, then, as a single human family…” (paragraph 8)
As I do these studies, my sphere of influence is small. I have no power to change society. And, thanks be to God, I have no responsibility to change society. But, I have the power and the responsibility that Henry David Thoreau had when he went to live by Walden Pond. “I went to the woods,” he said, “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.”
This Lent I will not be in the mountains, watching God re-create the world through spring. I will be at home, where I’ve been this last long year. But, as I emerge from this COVID year, I truly wish to live deliberately, by the revealed guidelines God has given through the centuries, and with the purpose of creating a more Christian world.
As you approach Lent, what are your thoughts and prayers?
Prayer:
“In the beginning, God saw how good it was.” Lord, I have a hard time believing that you see how good our world is today. Yet, You are in it, and there is much, much good in it. Lead me and guide me through these next few weeks to let go of what I need to let go of, hang on to what I need to keep, and at least dream of what my life would day-to-day look like if I lived more closely to your gifts of revelation. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
