Looking Ahead
Ash Wednesday Homily
By Rev. Dr. Beverly Bingle
February 17, 2021
Last week I was in a zoom meeting when the facilitator asked everyone to share what they’re planning for Lent this year.
I almost laughed out loud.
The thought of “giving something up” for Lent seems so strange right now.
For the past year we’ve been living like it was Lent all the time: giving things up, changing our habits, deprived, hunkered down, isolated.
Like a bad retreat.
The pandemic plunked us down in a “virtual Lent” - a REAL Lent in the sense that we used to understand the word “virtual,” that is, essentially and effectively Lent even though we didn’t formally recognize it or admit it.
Another meaning of the word “virtual” has come into vogue in recent years, referring to something that is NOT real but is made to look real because of computer software.
The world we’re living in today is, ironically, a world that’s virtual in BOTH senses of the word.
It’s REAL - a real pandemic, with major shifts in the way we live.
And it’s also NOT real - not normal, with our relationships stifled, routed though phone calls and drive-by birthdays and emails and zoom meetings.
That little virus has turned our world inside out.
We stay home, many of us alone.
We wear masks on the rare occasions that we go out of the house.
We don’t get close to anyone to talk or sing...or give and get a hug.
We don’t go to football or basketball games or the gym.
We don’t shop - we run through the grocery store as fast as we can, or we arrange to get food delivered to the house, or we drive up to the store to have the groceries dropped in the trunk.
We don’t gather in the chapel for Mass.
We don’t go to meetings.
We don’t gather with friends for lunch.
Here we are, hunkered down for a year, forced to give up so much, suspended in an alien world.
And now it’s Lent.
Isn’t that ironic!
I’m not giving anything up this year.
What I have decided to do is to look at what I’ve learned in this past year and make some of those pandemic lessons part of my life from now on.
The pandemic took away some things that I value more than I realized, like joining friends for lunch or dinner, so I’ll be sure to do that again once we’re able.
The pandemic taught me how important it was to stand on street corners with a “Black Lives Matter” sign, to hand out seedlings with Tree Toledo, and to sit in those meetings planning peace and justice actions, so I’m going to go back to doing that as soon as it’s safe.
The pandemic gave me time to sit around and do nothing without feeling guilty or rushed, to spend time marveling at how beautiful the world is, about how blessed I am just to be, so I’m going to stop and smell the roses.
I’m going to spend this Lent looking ahead and deciding how to put my life back together, but better - with a lot more appreciation for time and life and love.
Amen!