Ash Wednesday is just a week away. One of the casualties of the Budget crisis in Wisconsin has been my Lenten preparations. Oh, we got started on the right foot. We had a liturgy meeting on the first Sunday in February and began planning for our worship in Lent and Holy Week. I had high hopes then of having all of our planning done, both for the Lenten programs and our Lenten worship, well before Ash Wednesday. It shouldn’t have been a problem, with Ash Wednesday coming so late.

But it was not to be. Caught unawares by the developing protests, and needing to respond quickly to events as they developed, much of the work of the church had to become lower priorities. Among that work was Lent.

Today I got some space, a little at least, to begin thinking about what’s going to be happening next week, to begin thinking as well, about my observance of Lent. One of my questions is how to make our Lent a time that allows us to reflect on what is taking place around us, to consider our complicity and participation in the structures of society and in our interpersonal relationships that are life-denying rather than life-giving.

We tend to focus in Lent on our individual sins and experiences, to see Lent as a time to get right with God, to practice some spiritual discipline more intently, or to try to find ways of deepening our spirituality. I came across this wonderful reflection on Lent by Marilyn McCord Adams, in which she describes us, even believers as “spiritually autistic.” She argues that Lent should be a time when we should try to “restructure our personality to center on lived partnership with God.”

She says Lent should be a time when we break down the defenses that separate us from other human beings, but also break down the defenses that prevent us from experiencing God.

It’s a thought-provoking piece, well-worth reading. For me, in this time, it reminds me that with everything that is going on around us, with the noise that intrudes on our work from time to time, and the palpable anxiety that we encounter in the streets and when we interact with our neighbors on the square, finding space, time, and energy to do the work that Lent calls us to, will be a monumental task, perhaps a Lenten discipline of its own