March 5 is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the season of Lent – the forty days, plus Sundays, before Easter. The word Lent comes from an Old English word meaning simply “spring season,” a time when we observe the re-awakening of the world after the cold of winter, (even if this is perhaps more metaphorical for Floridians). The season of Lent is traditionally a time of contemplation and devotion, sometimes marked by fasting or other self-sacrificial practices, by grief and contemplating our mortality. This year, I am contemplating Lenten practices that are counter to the goal expressed by one person in the national government to “purposefully put Americans into trauma.” I came across this quote in a reflection by Diana Butler Bass who continues:

“Traumatized people can’t respond. Traumatized people go along. Traumatized people isolate themselves. Traumatized people can’t think clearly. Ash Wednesday is March 5 (one week from tomorrow), and thus begins Christianity’s season of introspection and repentance. Given what I just shared with you, I think the conventional themes of Lent might be counter-productive — even traumatic for many. People who have been traumatized and who are in shock don’t need anything that pushes them further toward hopelessness and despair.”

This year I invite you to look at Lent as a time to spiritually, mentally, and communally regroup. In a paragraph that is still posted on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website regarding traumatic events, spending time with supportive people and communities and engaging in practices that help reduce stress are named as means of coping. These are gifts that we can offer one another in this season of Lent: community, ritual, wellbeing, and witness. Let’s do Lent together this year, knowing that isolation only feeds trauma. 

Some Christian traditions refer to Lent as a season of “bright sadness” because we know that Easter morning is just around the corner. We carry both the brightness and the sadness within each of us, and both are transformed in community. Let’s commit to this Lenten journey as a people who both honor the sadness, and never lose faith in the promise of Easter brightness waiting, just below the horizon; let’s do Lent together.

Rev. Talia Raymond