I know we’re onto the Passion week, but I’ve still got Lenten thoughts in my drafts folder. 😛

Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.

Lent is a summons to live anew.

~Sister Joan Chittister

I’ve been wondering about the Church’s history with personal penitence. Is it warped theology? Is it a vestigial remnant from an earlier time that has outlived its original context? 

Was there a time when people were generally unaware of their sins and also willing to acknowledge them when someone pointed them out? Was this ever a particularly effective method of mass and personal change? I can’t imagine it. Certainly, that time is not now. 

Nowadays, a lack of penitence is really not a problem. At least, not among the people I know. 

We don’t need a season of penitence because we live in penitence all year round. We swim in it. We bathe our children in it. We are veritable Queens of Penitence.

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I don’t know about you, but I know what I’m doing wrong. To be more precise, I know all the things I’m doing wrong. I’m everlastingly sorry, often with heavy draughts of guilt and shame, for what I’m doing wrong. Also, I’m sometimes terrified that what I’m doing wrong is going to cause the world to collapse. The stakes feel unbearably high.

Between the web of internalized racism and misogyny, climate change responsibility, and participation in capitalism, I literally can’t do anything right. Ever.

Engage in a little self and social awareness and no wonder we’re hyperpenitent.

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If, presumably, people’s problem used to be a paucity of penitence, now our problem is a penitential overabundance. Both have proved to be equally adept at mucking up our ability to live in the ease, acceptance, and freedom of God. 

Lent, perhaps, could use a bit of an update. Same goal, different method.

3 Antidotes to Penitence

Antidote 1

Kids People do well if they can. -Dr. Ross Greene, alteration mine

Antidote 2

Amazing grace, how sweet the soundThat saved a wretch someone like me.-Chris Oberg, alteration hers

Antidote 3

Wild Geeseby Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesFor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rainare moving across the landscapes,over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,are heading home again.Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,the world offers itself to your imagination,calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —over and over announcing your placein the family of things.

Prayer of the Recovering Penitents

Do not forgive us our sins.

If you are going to do something with our sin, Might we ask That you make us okay with it.

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