Lamenting in Lent

Betwixt and Between Seasons of Life

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Photo by Luka Savcic on Unsplash

Living in a liminal space—a space of not yet; a space of betwixt and between has its own challenges. A liminal space is but a threshold—an arriving of a shift that feels different, but you’re not quite sure as to what is beyond the threshold.

It is a bewildering venture to live through the Lenten seasons of our lives and world. In this season, we barter away confidence for uncertainty and trade assurance for suspense.

We live in between the life we want to live and the life we are living right now at this precise moment in time. It is in this precise space where snakes begin to emerge from the cold ground shedding their old skins while still wearing the new and the old—not one or the other quite yet. Like herds of buffalo whose hides are rich and deep with winter fur but torn and ripping by the new young and tender fur underneath the old. It is both and—not, either or.

This, my friends, is where we are right now and this betwixt and between seems to best describe us politically and spiritually as well as all the dimensions of our lives I am thinking. It is where some of us are…theologically… where old things are fading away and new insights are coming. It’s not descontructing. It is holding the space of being changing but not yet, fully arriving.

It is not wrong to be in such a state of between. It is not wrong at all. Waiting is the mark of life itself. We just are so impatient. And this is where Mother Beech—the huge beech tree right off my study window teaches me her lessons.

I’ve watched her all winter and now in these days of longer sun; brighter light and warming air, Someone has announced to her that it’s time. It could be that the crocus at near her massive trunk is sounding out the news— “ It’s almost over. Almost, but not quite yet.”

This is the time to start pushing the sap up, up and through her woody soul into the hundreds of arms waiting on such a flow of life to reappear. And like her, my woody soul needs soft sap to stay alive.

The lessons we learn in Nature are indeed, the lessons we embrace in our lives. It’s not just one season or another. So much of life is in-between.

This is the lesson of Lent. This is how we Lament in Lent. This is how we wait until the sap starts rising.

Henri Nouwen calls this “active waiting.” He writes, “active waiting means to be fully present to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present for it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment!”

I turn in times like this to an entire book of raw emotions titled, “Lamentations.” In this remarkable book of unedited feelings and a spew of words, we read:

“When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions. Wait for hope to appear. Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face. The ‘worst’ is never the worst.” —Lamentations 3:28-30 The Message

And now my poem: Lamenting in Lent.

Also, in closing, be aware of the tool: 40 Days, 40 Miles with 40 Questions that you can download for individual or group use. It’s time to begin this exercise in the Lenten season.

I hope you enjoy my poem as well as I hope that my “set-up” of the poem might inspire and help you make sense of a liminal space you are experiencing right now.

I am a person of betwixt and between as I emerge as a poet. I still love writing the set up and narratives to my poems. They help me, if they don’t help anyone else to enter my poem with open eyes and open heart and provide a soft landing for the heart.

You’ll need to upgrade your subscription to read the poems. This way, you’re supporting my work; cheering me on and calling me forth to leave the betwixt and between and be the poet that I am. :-)