A Second Daily Reader for Lent: Daily readers, #2
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About this ebook
This second Lent reader – as well as the first one, published separately – has grown out of my own Lenten practices and observances over the year. I wrote them both because I would have found it helpful to have such a reader. I hope you enjoy and find the daily readings contained within helpful. And, of course, I hope your Lenten observations are just what you need them to be.
To me Lent is a time of 'wilderness work'. One goes in to one's own darkness and disorder, not to reject it, or deny it, but to sit with it. It is tremendously uncomfortable, even frightening. But out of this inner muck grows the soul.
NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, the biblical quotations are from the New International Version (NIV) translation and are quoted under fair-use provisions of copyright law.
Also, this reader contains daily reflections for all days from Ash Wednesday through to Easter Sunday. Different Christian traditions and denominations have somewhat slightly differing definitions of the Lenten period, sometimes excluding Sundays, sometimes including them, and often excluding the Holy Weekend containing Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I have included every day so the reader may include and leave out days to fit their preferred practice.
Cameron Gordon
I am creative fiction and nonfiction writer of plays, poetry and prose. My themes are eclectic but the major ones include: the meaning and practice of daily spirituality; the human experience and how it is affected by an increasingly technocratic and technologized world; war and peace in the digital age; quirky narratives of quirky trips; and unusual bits of history. I have training in a technical field and have had careers in government and academia. I continue to practice as an independent scholar but have devoted the greater part of my time and energy to being an artist.
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A Second Daily Reader for Lent - Cameron Gordon
INTRODUCTION
To me Lent is a time of ‘wilderness work’. One goes in to one’s own darkness and disorder, not to reject it, or deny it, but to sit with it. It is tremendously uncomfortable, even frightening. But out of this inner muck grows the soul.
There is a funny thing about wilderness work, however. It is usually long, and hard and sometimes dangerous. It can seem to lead nowhere but back to itself. However all that preparing and purifying of soil and then planting in that soil, as long and as fruitless as it seems, one day, suddenly, results in a shoot appearing. Then a bud and flower. Then a plant. Then many plants. This growth can all seem strong and sudden and easy. But the soil work was what allowed it to happen. There is no other way to grow.
I believe that was the type of work Jesus was doing when he went out into the wilderness. He encountered some of the greatest darkness in and around him during this time. But of course he rose again after those trials, prepared to face his greatest suffering on earth.
His wilderness process, though, took place in ordinary time and he completed his work in one go. Whereas I (and I would guess most people) require many goes at this work and certainly never complete it in this lifetime. Which is why we have the liturgical calendar and the church seasons - I believe - to allow us continued opportunities to work at it, and grow.
When I first tried to do my version of the work Jesus did in my first Lenten observation a couple of decades ago, it was all darkness for forty days and then sudden almost searing light at the end. The next few Lenten observations retained that quality, for the most part, though the themes changed. And then, slowly, the shift came, where more of the blossoms came out and came out early, though still with a fair share of heavy – and humbling – plodding and prodding. I'm still in process, though, and always will be, and every season is different so maybe next year it will be back to hard soil work. It all leads the same place, which is to be closer to God.
This second Lent reader – as well as the first one, published separately – has grown out of my own Lenten practices and observances over the year. I wrote them both because I would have found it helpful to have such a reader. I hope you enjoy and find the daily readings contained within helpful. And, of course, I hope your Lenten observations are just what you need them to be.
Shalom,
Cameron Gordon
NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, the biblical quotations are from the New International Version (NIV) translation and are quoted under fair-use provisions of copyright law.
Also, this reader contains daily reflections for all days from Ash Wednesday through to Easter Sunday. Different Christian traditions and denominations have somewhat slightly differing definitions of the Lenten period, sometimes excluding Sundays, sometimes including them, and often excluding the Holy Weekend containing Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I have included every day so the reader may include and leave out days to fit their preferred practice.
(1) ASH WEDNESDAY
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