Henry Ossawa Taylor, The Annunciation, 1898
In a strange (or not) turn of events that I didn’t see coming even six months ago, I’ve been doing some actual practices for Lent this year. It’s definitely been a bumpy road.
And I wonder if Lent without serious bumps in the road is actually Lent? (If a tree falls in the forest sort of question.)
Regardless, I have had a good many days when I have wondered why I was doing any of the reading or Lent journaling that I was doing. I wondered if there was a point. I wondered if I even believed anything anymore (I mean, I have gone through a long cycle of pessimism and atheism recently. Longer than ever before in my life). And I certainly keep wondering about the role of a religion that centers a man and makes very little space for women at all.
Darkness
I’ve been wondering that, though, since I was about 11 and went to the city library’s religions of the world section and kept pulling books off the shelves, desperate to find a religious system that didn’t center any kind of human figure or that did not anthropomorphize their god head. Alas, this seems to be something humans are incapable of, and the best we can hope for is that the gods/goddesses are built around the best of our own inclinations.
Too often, of course, this is not the case. A minister I follow on Bluesky said it best, “A god that needs violent men in order to succeed is a god invented by violent men.”
So yeah, I have been working through some dark night of the soul shit, for sure, but what’s new? As often in my life that I’ve felt deep devotion and connection to faith, there’s been just as much time when I’ve felt the opposite.
For me, currently, I keep coming back to Pope Leo and his strong and direct calls for a stop to all things that maga believes in and is putting out into the world. I go back to Oscar Romero and all of the Latin Americans who developed the ideas of liberation theology.
And I go back to Mary, Guadalupe in particular. (Did you know she’s the only one who is represented as pregnant? She’s wearing a Aztec pregnancy belt.)
I go back to this idea that she was asked to do this incredibly dangerous and risky thing so that we might know a different kind of world … or that we might be given a vision of a different world: one that’s not built on violence and power but on compassion and inclusivity. (I have a lot to say about that but I want to get closer to my point here and you know my heart.)
So I am, for the moment, not in that dark space — or I should say, not in a totally dark space. There is a window that is open and there is some light coming in. I am also actively lighting candles.
I am, for the moment, focused on the best parts of this thing that somehow is a piece of the puzzle of my mental well being and has been since I was small.
Light
I keep thinking about why I can’t get that same thing from, for example, personal development and self help sorts of writing. Why can’t I get it from all of the art and literature I love? What is it about theological discourse in particular that brings me solace and hope?
For me, I do not deny the dark parts, but the light… when I’m willing to engage with the mystical voices from the past (those well developed voices like Merton, Day, Francis and on and on the list could go)… when I am willing to release the hold that current day dark versions can impose, I can get to the core that is beauty and is the best of us.
When I’m reading Merton, there are times when I think he could see into the future, but it’s actually that he could so clearly see the present and the past that he could see the patterns, and the patterns, when it comes to humans, are always the same.
Not only could he see those patterns and clearly articulate them, he could articulate the type of candle we would need to light in ourselves to banish the dark and to go on with our work.
There was no naivete left in Merton when it came to this intertwining of dark and light in all humans. He just carried hope more stubbornly than I am sometimes capable.
He speaks directly to some part of me that is lacking (as we are all lacking in some way) and he doesn’t make me feel shame or even that I have to “fix” it. He shows me my weaknesses and convinces me time and again that I can be stronger in other ways. He believes our weaknesses are part of who we are and those parts are actually usable if we embrace them.
Newness
One of the things that has thrown me out of the dark and has me headed toward my own inner light again is a passage from my daily Merton readings.
He’s talking about how some people, regardless of chronological age, are living as if they are “old.” They live with old ideas, old memories, always looking backward, and are convinced nothing new is possible.
Then he says this:
“The new (human) lives in a world that is always being created and renewed. S/He lives in this realm of renewal and creation. S/He lives in LIFE. The old (human) lives without life. S/He lives in death.”
And it hit me like a rock between my eyes: that in my despair, I live in death.
YES
Which brings me back to Mary.
Many many years ago... early in the heyday of blogging... I decided to do the word of the year that had just become a thing and I chose the word YES because of my Guadalupe devotion.
I ended up sticking to that word for many years because of what it was doing to my life. It changed my life in ways I can’t begin to list. My devotion to that word, to the idea of Mary, pushed me out of my comfort zone, made me choose the new over the old, and made me see that vitality and abundance of my own creativity.
The word is part of how I ended up dancing again, how I got my ass on a buss and went far away for trainings, and how I eventually opened my own bricks and mortar studio (which a lot of you might remember was called Girl on Fire… for Guadalupe).
I kept thinking about getting YES as a tattoo, but I eventually got the Dickinson quote on my wrist: “I dwell in possibility.” When I first got that, it felt like a yes.
But it’s not totally. It doesn’t have the powerful momentum, the PUSH, of YES. It does not have the birthing power of yes.
I need to add yes back into that equation. I can get stuck in possibility. The dwelling aspect can become so comfortable that it, too, becomes old.
So I’ve decided to re-devote myself to YES. Maybe you need to do something similar.
What is calling to you? What do you need to say yes to in your life right now?
This writing feels somewhat incomplete to me, but then we’re not at the end of Lent yet, and each day (even today as I edit), I can sense that the journaling I’m doing is leading me somewhere important — not any kind of end destination but perhaps a well lit place in which I can feel my devoted self again. That would be enough. For now.