Spiritual Seasons

Is it winter? Upstate New York just received more than 2 inches of rain in the month of January! What’s up with that? It’s winter, not spring. Since I am a snow lover, I thought one of the benefits of being a pastor in upstate New York was the snow. Where is it!?! My dreams of snowmobiling, skiing, and snowshoeing are quickly becoming just that, a dream. This is not the winter season I had hoped for. The weather we have had lately has been more of a Washington D.C. winter: rainy, some snow, sometimes mild, or sometimes cold. You never know what you will get. Then, just this week, we received a foot of snow.  What a crazy winter!

We all know that we have four seasons of weather, but often we do not realize that we go through spiritual seasons. Unlike winter, spring, summer, and fall, spiritual seasons do not begin and end in a timely fashion. Rather, we experience highs and lows with our relationship with God that correspond to our life situations. During high spiritual seasons, we feel on fire for God, have a sense of excitement, and feel the need to reach out to someone. During “low” spiritual seasons, we wonder why we feel so discounted, out of place, or have feelings of doubt. We long for support, understanding, and love.

As worshiping Christians, we have begun the season of Lent. Lent is a season that begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter Sunday. On Ash Wednesday, we mark ourselves with ashes, which symbolizes our penitence, morality, and contrition. Marking one’s self with ashes is an ancient practice that even goes back to the time of the Old Testament. The Lenten season in the life of the Christian provides for us a time of reflection, study, worship, and spiritual growth. Through this season, we will participate with the Gospel story through the last days of Christ, His teachings, His entry into Jerusalem, His last meal with His friends, betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. This season is meant for prayer, reflection, the giving up of something or the taking on of something, fasting, meditation, and solitude.

Marcus Borg, a noted professor of religion and culture, helps us understand the value of the season of Lent:

This is what the season of Lent is about, about being born again, about following the path of death and resurrection, about participating in Jesus’ final journey. To become somewhat more concrete, some of us may need to die to specific things in our lives–perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives (you can die to deadness.) It is possible to leave the land of the dead. So, the journey of Lent is about being born again–about dying and rising, about mortality and transformation.

I really like how Marcus Borg helps us understand Lent and our need for rebirth. We journey through a season of dysfunction, grief, or poor relationships and we need rebirth. We all have times or seasons when we get into, what I like to call, a “funk.” Sometimes, we need to work through our “funk” by attuning our spiritual life. Lent is a fantastic way to experience “rebirth” in our lives.

During the season of Lent, I hope you will join with me in the adventure of this spiritual season. It is my prayer that this will be an uplifting spiritual season for you and your family as we walk the Lenten road to Easter. May God be with you if you walk through a dark and cold spiritual winter, as you look to the warmth and transformation that we can find through spiritual seasons.