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 Bishop's Message: A Lenten Reflection

“I’m converted, but I’m not converted that far.”

E. Stanley Jones (1884–1973) was a missionary in India. While there, he

established a Christian Ashram, a sort of spiritual community and retreat center. Jones recounted this story:

In the Ashram, we gave the servants, including the sweeper, a holiday one day each week, and we volunteered to do their jobs for them. The sweeper’s job included the cleaning of the latrines before the days of flush toilets. No one would touch that job but an outcaste [the lowest of the low in the Indian caste system], but we volunteered.

One day I said to a Brahmin [upper caste] convert who was hesitating to volunteer: ‘Brother, when are you going to volunteer?’ He shook his head slowly and said:
‘Brother Stanley, I’m converted, but I’m not converted that far.’

 

“I’m converted, but I’m not converted hat far.” You’ve got to appreciate the honesty. Lent is the time in the spiritual rhythm of the church year when we take an honest look at the state of our faith and ask ourselves, “How far am I converted?” Is my conversion limited? What limits it? What holds me back from loving God with my whole heart, mind and strength? From loving my neighbor as myself?

Do I receive each day with expectancy as a gift from God?

Am I dying to self so I can enter more fully into the joy of God and live for others? Do I see every person I meet, every encounter, as a gift?

Is there forgiveness I have yet to give? Forgiveness I have yet request or accept?

Where am I storing my treasure? Am I caught up in the madness of accumulating more and more? Or am I learning to let go, learning to give more and more? How converted am I?

Do I live each day shaped by the knowledge that God’s kingdom has broken into the world and into my life; God’s kingdom of love, truth and joy; justice, freedom and peace? How converted am I in embodying that love, truth and joy; justice, freedom and peace?

How evident are the fruit of the Spirit in my day-to-day life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

In Lent, we engage more intently in this self-reflection and invite the Holy Spirit to continue working conversion in us. I’m converted. How converted am I?

 

Under the Mercy,

ASH WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5

My life and my death are not purely and simply my own business. I live by and for others, and my death involves them. 
 
Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action

When my youngest sister, Judea, was three years old, she refused to hold anyone’s hand when crossing the street or walking on a busy sidewalk. Instead, she would stubbornly declare in her tiny voice, “I hold my own hand!” 

There is a temptation to begin the season of Lent as a solitary journey, to hear the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” as an individual invitation instead of a communal one. Yet, the prayer that proceeds the marking of ashes on our foreheads begins, “Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth.” It offers a poignant reminder of our common bonds of birth, breath and death.   

Despite this era of great divisions and an epidemic of loneliness, the Holy Spirit is here among us. I wonder how the Spirit might move during this season of Lent if we approach the spiritual practices of self-examination and repentance as a common endeavor instead of a solitary one. What if we sought to make a right beginning, traveling the Lenten wilderness together for the express purpose of being re-bound to each other and all of creation through Christ? What if we spent this season together in prayer, fasting, self-denial and reading and meditating on God’s holy Word, boldly considering how we can right the wrongs and sins of the past and strive to repent of those sins and any we have continued to commit? 

We never let Judea cross the busy street or wander the crowded sidewalk alone. We walked alongside her, behind her and with her, gently guiding her by the elbow when needed (she was holding her own hand, after all) and reminding her that her journey was also our journey and that we would all get where we were going—together. 

For Reflection
This Lent, what spiritual practice could your community adopt as a communal endeavor? How could we travel the wilderness together with intentionality?
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