Part 1:
Before you begin reading Part 2, I want you to put this down and take a walk, take a bike ride, take a journey somewhere — anywhere — just go. You could go around your neighborhood or to a park. If you’re limited in time or movement, perhaps walk around your yard, or inside your home. If nothing else, close your eyes and imagine you’re walking on a favorite beach, through the neighborhood where you grew up, through the landscape of someplace you’ve loved. Once you’ve done that, come back, and we’ll talk more.
Part 2:
We’ve been locked in long enough, haven’t we? We may not have the all-clear to travel freely, yet, but a sense of freedom of movement would be nice, wouldn’t it? Especially after all the King Cake we’ve been eating for the last month!
So let’s do Lent a little differently this year. Enough with ashes and reminders of our mortality for the moment — we’ve been reminded of that for twelve months straight.
Usually Lent is a time when things stop: we stop eating sweets and fine foods; we turn off the TV earlier in the evening; we spend more time sitting still in prayer and meditation. But, long before Lent had become a season of stopping, it was first a season of pilgrimage; a time of movement.
Early in Christian history, in the city of Rome, daily pilgrimages were made to station-churches around the city where prayers were spoken, hymns sung, and Mass celebrated — each day a different church.
The season of Lent is framed at the beginning by the remembrance of Jesus’ forty-day sojourn in the wilderness, when he was tempted by Satan to take a shortcut to messiahship, and at the end by Jesus’ pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Focusing on the life of Jesus, we remember that he journeyed around Capernaum and beyond; he went off to quiet places for prayer; he took boat rides with his disciples; he passed through villages outside his comfort zone; and, everywhere, he embodied the presence of God’s movement into the world. Lent is a season of reflection in action, from beginning to end!
Hopefully, you were able to take up my direction and go for a walk or ride, or somehow got outside of your physical and mental confines. In that movement, did you get the sense of leaving some things behind? Did you go with a destination in mind, or allow yourself to explore? Or, did you march around begrudgingly because I asked you? Don’t worry: there’s no right or wrong way to begin this Lenten journey. The important part for today is that you set in your mind to begin, with your first steps.
Over the next 40 + 7 days (remember that Sundays don’t count toward Lent’s forty days), you will have a daily task on this journey. As travelers make preparation, pack bags, search for food along the way, handle detours, and enjoy the company of fellow pilgrims, so we will, too.
…begin thinking about someone you can ask to join you as a spiritual companion on this journey.
In preparation for tomorrow’s leg of the journey, begin thinking about someone you can ask to join you as a spiritual companion on this journey. It might be another church member you’d like to get to know better, someone in your home, or, even better, a neighbor or friend who isn’t part of a church. Let them know you’re taking a spiritual walk, invite them to join you on this walk, and that, once a week, you will check in on each other.
Let us begin this pilgrimage with the prayer that has been said by pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago (a pilgrimage route across southern France and northern Spain) for centuries:
O God, who brought your servant Abraham out of the land of the Chaldeans, protecting him in his wanderings, who guided the Hebrew people across the desert, we ask that you watch over us, your servants, as we walk in the love of your name. Be for us our companion on the walk, Our guide at the crossroads, Our breath in our weariness, Our protection in danger, Our waystation on the path, Our shade in the heat, Our light in the darkness, Our consolation in our discouragements, And our strength in our intentions. So that with your guidance we may arrive safe and sound at the end of the Road and enriched with grace and virtue we return safely to our homes filled with joy. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Rev. Dr. David Chisham
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Lovely David! I like this😊