This week Lent begins. My Facebook feed is full of clergy colleagues whose hearts are breaking as they face another Lenten season preaching to a camera. Others can’t bare to ask their people to enter into a season of suffering when we have all already suffered so much this year. Historic pandemic, historic protests, historic wildfires, historic election, historic insurrection, historic ice storms, and more have taken place these past 12 months and all have taken a spiritual, mental, and emotional toll. Other clergy colleagues are just totally out of energy after having spent so much mental energy learning new tech, totally reimagining advent/Christmas, and continuing to provide pastoral care in the midst of difficult times. I have definitely hit walls this year and struggled as I learned new tech and tried to create support systems and meaningful spiritual experiences for our community.
Oddly one of the things that has helped me the most this year has been serving on the school board. Not only does serving on the school board cause me to confront my own implicit biases, stretch me as a leader, and expose me to incredible high capacity thinkers, it gives me another area of focus besides church. I have an opportunity to grow and learn in fantastic ways and spend my mental energy on something besides my job. I think in a year when travel, outings, and other experiences have been so limited having this outlet for my mental energies has been super helpful. I know this might not be true for every personality type, but for me serving on school board has forced a kind of balance onto my life in this unusual season.
After a day of thinking about boundary changes, reading scientific articles on Covid in the classroom, and listening to personal narratives detailing decades of harm done to Black and Native students, there is something so life-giving in writing a Lenten devotional on Liberation or leading a leadership retreat facilitating a vision for the next church year.
I have always believed in balance, in rhythm, in cycles. Lent is part of the rhythm of the church year, it’s a balance to our lives of excess, our faith that so often wants to guard against suffering. Just so my work between church and school provides me a balance, a life in rhythm with cycles between public service and spiritual leadership. It’s our life work to find our own holy rhythms, to find the spaces where our life comes into balance, not as a static state, but as a spirit fueled movement between areas of focus and life-giving work and rest.
So this Lent take something on, or give something up. Find a pathway to express a part of yourself that has been hidden or neglected. Take on a new way of resting or a new way of working. Give up the habits and patterns that are getting in your way. Experiment, and in this season of surrender maybe you will find a new rhythm for life.
-Eilidh
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