In the Ash Wednesday liturgy of both the Episcopal and United Methodist Churches, the pastor says the following words:
“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observe a holy Lent...”
This year, I did not observe Lent. I lived it.
No, no one died and no new diagnoses. Hopefully, in the future I’ll be able to write details. Right now, I can tell you that my Lenten season was spent in shock and overwhelm and tears and trying the best I could to hold everything together.
The pictures below are how my 11-year-old processed it in real time.
The above photograph is three versions of his new character that he found himself repeatedly drawing on his schoolwork. He named this character “the Lord of Chaos.” A shadowy figure with a hat, of whom all you see is a silhouette amid intense background patterns; the Lord of Chaos brings chaos and disruption. The chaos itself is neither good nor bad; it all depends on your interpretation. The Lord of Chaos might destroy a bad world, which is good. Or, the chaos might destroy your world, which presumably you would see as bad. We had a lot of chaos and disruption in our household during the Lenten season.
A couple weeks after first showing me his drawings, I asked my 11-year-old more questions about the Lord of Chaos; and he presented me with a new drawing. It includes the Lord of Chaos, but provides a container for him, a supreme being who created everything and holds the whole universe, chaos and all.
This being reminds me of the phrase from the book of Acts in the bible, “...in him we live and move and have our being.” Curiously enough, the footnote tells me that when Paul is addressing the Athenians about the altar “to an unknown god,” he is quoting from the Greek philosopher Epimenides from the 6th century BCE. This supreme being provides a space for all: good, bad, chaotic, orderly, all of our actions and lives.
Incidentally, I wrote most of this post on Easter Sunday, six weeks ago. Yet I struggled to get it finalized to share with you. Perhaps Easter Sunday was still too soon. I asked the school counselor to meet with my 11-year-old, simply telling the counselor that we’d had “a rough spring.” The counselor’s report back to me began by saying, “You were not, uh, you were not exaggerating.”
This Lent/spring was unlike any other. It appears things that were disrupted needed disrupting. We have gotten more help besides the school counselor. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for Part II of my update with what I’ve learned about Easter.
Glad you are back, Heather. Good restart!