Out beyond ideas...

7 Steps To A Meaningful Lent

7 Steps To A Meaningful Lent

The Liturgical Season of Lent starts this Wednesday, February 6 with “Ash Wednesday.”  This is one of CCC’s most celebrated Liturgical Seasons (if you can have such a thing.)

Here are a few suggestions on how we might have a more meaningful Lenten experience.

Step 1 - Find Out What Lent Means To You.
One of the great things about Lent is its ambiguity.  It has a rich and diverse history and is celebrated in a variety of different ways by a variety of different Christian traditions.  Covenant Community often focuses on the "inward" journey during this time, but there are a variety of different lenses through which to interpret and embody it.  So, find out more about this Liturgical Season and decide how you want to frame it for yourself.  Do a "Goggle" search and see what you can find out! 

Step 2 - Make a Commitment To Something Specific and Practical
Celebrating a Liturgical season holds to the old saying, "You get out of it, what you put into it." Because Lent lasts for forty days (not including Sunday's) it is a conducive season for taking on something new or giving something up or focusing on something specific. So, it’s a great time to think about spiritual practices.  It has a natural starting time, Ash Wednesday, and an ending time, Easter.  Perfect for developing a good habit or breaking yourself of a bad one.   This quote might helpful as you think about what to "do."

"Within the liturgical framework of the life of the congregation, corporate and individual observances of Lent have three elements; fasting or some other form of renunciation; prayer; and acts of Compassion.  "Prayer, Fasting ad Compassion - these three are one, and they give each other life.  For fasting is the soul of prayer and compassion is the life of fasting.  Let no one tear them apart, for they cannot be separated." (St Peter Chrysologus)

Step 3 - Find an Individual or Community With Which To Journey
Even though Lent often has an inward solitary focus it does not have to be an isolated one.  Talk to others about how they are celebrating the season and share something about your experience. Finding another person or a community with which to debrief your experience and find support and accountability can be an important or your experience.

CCC will be focusing on issues of discernment and call during Lent.  In our worship we will be using a book by Marjoie Bankson entitled, “Call to the Soul: Six Stages of Spiritual Discernment.”  Each week we will explore a different stage or phase of discerning who we are called to be and what we are called to do. 

We will also be offering two ecclesia project courses during lent.

• Fear Not This Strangeness You Feel…: Practices of Discernment (on Sunday nights)
• The Enneagram: A Spiritual Journey Through Lent (on Wednesday nights)

Either of these classes would enrich your lent experience.  Sign up

Step 4 - Come To The Fat Tuesday Party
(Feb 5 , 7:30 PM at the Irish Rover)
Even though Lent officially begins on Ash Wednesday, traditionally a somber day of prayer and penance, many cultures and traditions begin the season with a great festival or party (i.e. Mardi Gras).   Plus, maybe Fat Tuesday can provide you with something to be penitential about!

Step 5 - Come to The Ash Wednesday Service
(6:3O PM at James Lees)
The Ash Wednesday Service provides a great ritual and celebration to mark the beginning of your journey.  The cross of ashes on your forehead provides a great symbol for the journey on which you are embarking.

Step 6 - "Do" Holy Week
Lent is often scene as preparation for Holy Week and Easter.  There are five main celebration in Holy Week.  Palm Sunday - Jesus entry into Jerusalem, Maundy Thursday - Last Supper, Good Friday - Death on Cross and Easter - the resurrection of Jesus.  Finding someway to celebrate and remember these events provides a great ending to the celebration of Lent.

Step 7 - If you don't do anything there is always next year!

Hope this is helpful!
Jud

Christ the King Sunday... Again!

Christ can be both King and Baby

    I always struggle with the image of Christ as the King, and thanks to my deep love and commitment to the liturgical calendar its time to struggle again.   This coming Sunday, November 26th is the last Sunday of the liturgical year and it’s the day we celebrate Christ the King Sunday.   Liturgically speaking it makes logical sense we have to get Christ up as King before we can get him down as baby Jesus.  It’s a Yen and Yang thing.  So this last Sunday of the year we celebrate Christ with the most transcendent and “lifted up” image – Christ sitting on the right hand of the throne of God.  This symbol and Sunday celebration has it place within the calendar.  It can simply remind us that Christ and his path does (can) lead to restoration and wholeness.  Christ does bridge the gap between the universal and the particular, between the sacred and profane.  Between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Christ can be, must be, both King and baby. 
    However, this image is potentially abrasive and even abusive.  For those of us in patriarchal recovery groups – testosterone anonymous, this image of Christ the King is also a tough one.  I can only image how difficult for those who have been on the other end of patriarchy.  So, there are many obvious reason to struggle with this image, but it seems important to claim it, integrate it and transcend it.  Especially in the unique times in which we live.   
    We have an opportunity and responsibility at this time in history and in this context of religious integral pluralism and its opposing force of exclusive Christianity, to claim again this person of Christ and this Christian path.   With a renewed intention and seriousness we can claim a Christian path of radical embrace leading to the wholeness and healing for all of creation.  There are those who will use this Christian path to exclude others, often using images such as Christ the King and doctrinal propositions, to separate and divide us from each other, or as a tools for individual ego aggrandizement or to back a worldview of privilege and dominance or simply for food for spiritual narcissism. We can and should celebrate that others take Christianity seriously and that we stand together in a shared tradition of practice and yet we should not allow that partial message to be confused with the full message of this path, which is one of a radical all inclusive love and grace that leads us beyond ourselves.
    I say this not to continue to draw lines between sects and forms of Christianity which only continues our alienation form each other.   All expressions of Christianity have their place and value in the mosaic of Christian expression.  Instead, I say this,  and I claim this Sunday, to strengthen the resolve and commitment of those who are struggling to forge a new faith - a serious, inclusive and integrative Christianity.  I say this to support those who want and need an inclusive Christian path to ground and center them in a community of love and acceptance.  And who need this path to help them get over themselves just at invites them to love themselves.  I say this to energize the Christian social field of inclusion so that it might embrace even that social field of exclusion. 
    To affirm and celebrate Christ the King Sunday does not mean we must accept it as a symbol of exclusivity or affirm a form of Christian triumphalism.  Christ the King is also the Cosmic Lover which takes many forms and expressions in many different traditions to reveal the inclusive love of God and the essential unity of us all.
    So this Sunday I will celebrate with enthusiasm and joy Christ “high and lifted up” with the full knowledge that only a few weeks later I will celebrate Christ born in a manger as a simple, particular baby.  For me, the meaning and power is in this paradox.