In this biweekly column, Audrey explores what it means to be a queer Christian in a world where Christianity is weaponized against minorities, including the LGBTQ community.
Growing up, Lent functioned more as a cultural ritual or chance to set a personal challenge (like giving up soda or Facebook) than a spiritual time. This is likely because Presbyterians don’t have any specific requirements for Lent, so I followed the lead of my Catholic friends and tried to figure out what the big deal was. For those who don’t know, Lent marks the 40 days leading up to Easter. It is very prominent in Catholic traditions, whereas Protestant theologian John Calvin basically dismissed it as superstitious hogwash. But over the last couple decades it has started to make its way back into mainline churches. Christians are advised to fast, pray, and self-reflect during this time.
Anyway, I guess it makes sense that Lent always sneaks up on me because I never really knew why I should care about it. The people around me didn’t seem to. Even though I’ve had Ash Wednesday services in my planner for weeks, I didn’t think at all about Lent until it was happening. Although giving up soda is a noble goal, it doesn’t have anything to do with faithful reflection. That lack of real connection is the reason I haven’t commemorated Lent at all since I was in high school. But it is very hard to be a queer person in the world right now, and it’s also an especially hard time to be a queer person in church, even my relatively welcoming one. I made a list of four things I could do during Lent that would make the 40-day period meaningful and prepare me to celebrate the Resurrection and all it represents. I am sharing it with y’all because regardless of your faith or lack thereof, it is important to be intentional now and then about the ways we engage with our brains and the world. This is as good a time as any, I think.
1. Give yourself time
This post is up a full week after Ash Wednesday, and I decided that was okay. I am my own harshest critic, and nothing makes my anxiety spiral faster than believing I have allowed my imperfections to show. But I am committing to patience this season. I promise myself that I will pause longer, consider my choices more thoughtfully, and forgive myself when I can’t move as quickly as I think I should. In a cultural and political moment where everything seems urgent and impossible, we have to find ways to check in with ourselves and give ourselves grace for the fact that we cannot save the world alone.
2. Read a lot of poetry and a little bit of scripture
I don’t do either of these things hardly at all because they scare the fuck out of me, but like I said this is all about setting intentions. The problem is that when I read poetry, including the Psalms, it messes with my alignment. It forces me to sit up straighter and recognize words and ideas that pluck at the sinewy parts of myself I ignore. I hope in these few weeks we can all try to read some things that scare us. For starters, here are the last two stanzas of a poem by Jan Richardson that my friend shared on Facebook and I had to just stare at it for a while.
So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we arebut for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made,
and the stars that blaze
in our bones,
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
3. Go outside
IT IS SPRING. Is it spring where you are? We’ve already surpassed 80 a couple times in Dallas. One of my favorite things about Lent is that it welcomes longer, warmer days. As Easter approaches, new flowers bloom and new birds sing. Whatever your favorite way to be outside is, I hope you make time to do it. Panentheist understandings of God resonate very closely with me (essentially the idea that what we call God is in and of the entire physical universe and also exists outside of time and space), so being in nature is a very important part of my spiritual practice. Of course we can seek the divine in anything and everything, but it is easier to find in a perfectly strange flower than the pen cup on my desk, ya know? So my partner and I went camping this weekend and drank coffee on a log by a lake, and even though it was grey and windy, I felt thankful for a peaceful 24 hours with which to reset my brain.
4. Find a way to pray that doesn’t hurt
I’ve decided to read a psalm every day of Lent, starting with Psalm 90 because it is about how humans are dust and God will return us to that state at the end of their lives, and how perhaps we can do some work that matters before then. I am very good at praying aloud in groups and absolutely terrible at praying alone. It makes me feel ridiculous and humiliated, and my mind wanders like a 4-year-old in the cereal aisle whenever I pray silently. I am hoping that this will help me focus. What do y’all do to focus your prayers? Are there any devotionals out there that won’t make my eyeballs fall out of my head from rolling them so hard? Let’s chat in the comments.
