Cleaning your Lent Filter

Lint in your dryer is at best a distraction and at worst something that will totally destroy your dryer, or even cause your apartment complex to burn down when it catches on fire. That’s what the humble lint filter is for, clearing away the unwanted distraction of lint and preventing apartment fires. 

If you’re from Oklahoma or Texas, “lint” and “lent” are homonyms (due, if you must know, to a neutralization of the contrast between [ɛ] and [ɩ] before nasals. That’s why we have to say “ink pen” and “stick pin” to differentiate pɛn from pɩn. See, I knew you didn’t really want to know.)

Lent – not lint - is one of the rhythms that the church has followed for centuries. It is a time to confess our resistance to the light, and time of preparation for the death and resurrection of Jesus. A time of considering Christ’s suffering and “rethinking how we are called to take up our crosses”. It’s a time to focus on dying to ourselves and the best way to do that is to “practice denying ourselves through the forty days of Lent, fasting from stuff that we usually enjoy so we can learn to hunger and thirst for God’s kingdom.¹

I come from a tradition that does not practice Lent but in recent years I have been around more people who do and will be doing it for this first time this year. Last year around this time, I was at the Boiler Room in Kansas City surrounded by people most of whom had given up something for Lent: meat, cooked food, sugar, chocolate, even jaywalking – which is harder than you might think if you live downtown and walk everywhere. You’d be surprised how long it takes those crosswalks to change. (Thanks, Beau, for the lesson in respecting civil authority).  

I don’t really claim to pretend that I understand HOW fasting or giving up chocolate, meat, twitter or TV for 40 days could bring me closer to God. Brian McLaren says that fasting doesn’t make him feel closer to God; mostly it makes him feel “closer to pizza.” Sometimes, though, you just have to have confidence that a community has certain practices for a reason and you trust the community enough to engage in the practice. Brian says that fasting helps him feel and acknowledge his weakness in the face of impulses and cravings of his body. Fasting helps him trade something he can see (donuts) for something he can’t. ²

Fasting, in general, or limited fasting during Lent, is a way we can show God we love Him more than the thing we can see before us that looks so appetizing or appealing.³

Lent is really about obedience, practicing obedience to something outside ourselves. Dennis Okholm (quoting Brian Taylor) says,

“We like to think of ourselves as independent rugged individuals who make our own rules. But. . . . if we seek God’s will for our life, every choice we make requires a new obedience. Even in our ordinary lives, we ‘have to serve somebody,’ some institution, some tradition, or some rules.

"I have found that through the limits of obedience, I grow beyond the confines of the self with its desires and traps." ⁴

Patrick Morely says that “Fasting releases the participant from the confusion of competing voices. Your personality and temperament will affect the kinds of things that distract from your relationship with God. For me, it’s work. I’ve discovered fasting as a way to slow down my RPM’s protecting my focus on Jesus Christ.”⁵

So I’ve thought quite a bit about what distraction I can give up this Lent season and will be giving up Facebook, as well as probably some sort of food item which I haven’t decided on yet. I’ll let you know how it goes. . . but not on Facebook. 

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Footnotes:

1. Shain Claiborne, et al, CommonPrayer: A liturgy for ordinary Radicals.

2. Brian McClaren, Findingour way again: the return of the ancient practices, p. 84

3. Patrick Morely, Aman’s guide to the spiritual disciplines. p. 121

4. Dennis Okholm, MonkHabits for Everyday people. p. 66-67

5. Patrick Morely, A man’s guide to the spiritual disciplines. p. 121

“Tune our spirits, O Lord, to sing out with the sky.”

“Tune our spirits, O Lord, to sing out with the sky.”

This was part of the daily reading for October 30 in "Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals"

I immediately paused and wondered why it is so hard to sing out with the sky, when I am so distracted by things here below and wrote this little poem/prayer.

Tune our spirits, O Lord, to sing out with the sky!

Why is my heart so easily turned to things below?

To earthly groans,

To the hushed oohs and aahs over the latest technology unveiled,

To the whispers of celebrity gossip,

To the harsh warbling of political posturing,

To speculations on wars and rumors of war,

To the cries of my flesh and physical cravings,

To the auto-reminders bleeping away for daily events,

To endless email discussions.

Fix my eyes on things above

That my spirit may hear the cry of your heart, God.

To sing out with the sky and leave earthly cares below, if just for a moment.

It's a constant struggle to weed out distractions and create space for me to hear God speaking. 

Everything I know about Life, I learned Training for the Freewheel - Part IV

 Day four of my musings on what one can learn from training for an endurance sport. And the moral of the story is "Tim needs something different to think about while out on those long rides". This really IS the last post on this.

Nutrition and Fuel

An endurance athlete – one in training and one competing – needs to be very serious about nutrition. You need a good base nutrition, day in and day out sensible eating. You can’t say, “I ate last Thursday so I am good for now.” To be successful in life’s race, we need consistent and every day time with God. The Word of God is the protein we need, especially after a long day of training to build up our muscles and not tear them down.

All sorts of racers try to “carb load” the night before a race to store up energy. They say that this doesn’t really work. Ditto for drinking lots of water beforehand. What is important is to eat in a healthy way consistently. Likewise, we should not ignore the Word and then hit it hard when we have a big decision or trial. That will help some but the base nutrition from day to day is what will carry you for the long haul.

Runners and cyclists also take “gel nutrition” for quick energy during a long event. There is no time for a full meal and you would not be able to digest it anyway, without drawing energy away from your muscles. So people use these gels, or as I discovered this week, honey, which has a very similar composition.

This “on the go” nutrition might correspond to verses we memorize and recalled in the heat of battle.  

Ps. 119:103 How sweet your words taste to me; they are sweeter than honey.

Nutrition also includes what you choose not to eat.

They say you should avoid eating processed sugary drinks and fat as you ride or run as it is hard for your body to digest those on the go.

Last year when I was in Northern Ireland, I was on a long ride with a friend. We stopped for lunch, which for him included a pint of whole milk and 3 ice cream bars. On the way out of town, we stopped to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral. After a few minutes, I couldn’t find him. Turns out, he was outside lying on the grass asleep. Now, milk is actually a great post-ride recovery drink and ice cream is okay, too, post ride. 

In the race of life and ministry, I’d say these things represent the distractions that we might feed on mentally: TV, internet, video games, etc. Not bad necessarily in and of themselves in small doses, but they drain your energy and distract you from the prize when you are out on the long road.

And if taken in large doses daily, you will end up with a lot of “excess baggage” that will slow you down considerably in the race, or totally sideline you.  

Speaking of Excess baggage, there is also “the sin that so easily entangles”

 Heb 12:1

This can include simply the distractions of life, but also the sins and obsessions that we cling to and carry around.

As I began training for the freewheel ride, I was setting off on my rides with a backpack holding extra water, tools, and all sorts of things “just in case”. And I found that my back was really killing me after a while. So I got rid of the backpack and got a little seat pack for the bike and put only essential tools there. And I got a second water bottle holder for the bike post. This way I am unencumbered and my back does not kill me.

One lesson there is that you can not plan on bringing everything with you will need for the long haul. You are going to have to find water along the way – you simply can’t carry 6 bottles’ worth on your back. This means depending on others and God and not trying to prepare for each contingency on your own.

As Forrest Gump said, “That’s all I have to say about that!”

Just remember when you are in it for the long haul: “There will be a party at the end of the ride and you are invited!”