Neil Darragh writes that Lent is a stocktaking time when we live gratefully allowing change to emerge personally, socially, in the church community and in our environment.

The 40 days of Jesus in the wilderness is the founding story for our practice of Lent. For 40 days Jesus reduces to a minimum the supports and enjoyments of normal social life and prepares for his mission. Living in wilderness, he clarifies the focus of his mission to bring about the reign of God in the world.

In our region of the Earth, Lent comes in autumn. It is a natural season of shedding and trimming, of mature growth reduced so that new growth can emerge. It is a rhythm of time that doesn’t take much account of progress or achievement. It is a rhythm of conversion and thanksgiving. Lenten conversion leads to Easter thanksgiving; and Easter thanksgiving drives our new Lenten conversion.

Lent as a liturgical season has grown out of the earlier traditions of preparation for either Baptism or Reconciliation. Traditionally it was, and still is, a time when those preparing for Christian Baptism sought to change from their old ways of living into a new Christian way. As traditional preparation for Reconciliation, it was a time of penance, of re-conversion, when those Christians whose life-styles had separated them from the Christian community sought to be reconciled.

More recently, social justice has been a focus of Lenten practices and it is from this more recent tradition that comes the slogan "live simply that others may simply live." In this case, Lent is focused not just on our own personal lives but also on the state of the world around us.

The change that we seek in Lent does not need to begin from admissions of sin or failure. It begins best from a sense of thanksgiving. It is the sense of the energy of God in and around us that is the starting point for renewal. When his public mission begins, Jesus calls his disciples to conversion out of a sense of the gracious energy of God’s reign already emerging around them. Knowing what we need to change emerges from knowing for what we are thankful. It is the open heart that counts more than the bowed head.

Living Out in Four Dimensions 

Christian life is lived out in the four dimensions of our human nature: personal, ecclesial, social, and environmental. We are individuals (personal), but our lives are enmeshed in social relationships with other people (social) including other members of the Christian community (ecclesial); including too our relationships with the natural world around us (environmental). All of these four dimensions constitute us as human beings. We lose something of ourselves if we pay attention to only one or two of them.

We can best treat Lent then as a season of thanksgiving and change in four dimensions of our lives: personal, ecclesial, social, and environmental.

Personal Dimension

In the personal dimension, looking into ourselves, we begin by paying attention to the gifts for which we are thankful, our personal qualities and talents, gifts of God, acts of grace and graciousness that others have done for us or we to them. Emerging from between and constricting these gifts are the things we know we need to change. A modern way of dealing with this is to look at addictions (vices essentially), where legitimate desires and hopes have become inordinate and self-destructive. Probably most of us have several of these but some are more self-destructive than others: addictions to drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sex, food, work, accumulation, new experiences, or (more subtlely) an attitude of dependency, a desire for honour, or a compulsion to control others. Generally these are about an overdose of self-indulgence, self-promotion, or self-interest. The tradition of "giving up something for Lent" has been an attempt to deal with these in the form of increased self-control.

Ecclesial Dimension

The ecclesial dimension is about how we relate to other people within the Christian community. Firstly, what do we have to be thankful for in this community? A community in which there is trust and common belief perhaps. A supportive network of people? The generous, dedicated, or compassionate people that we cannot help but admire and wish we could imitate? Leadership that builds community and communicates a common vision? In each of our church communities there will be reasons for thankfulness, and we may find the Holy Spirit in unexpected places. But growing out of that thankfulness will also be invitations to change. 

This is a community that often fails. It will be easy to pick instances of failure and defect — forms of abuse or bullying, financial impropriety, prejudice, cynicism, or simply incompetence. Authority in the Church can be a problem. Does it fail to empower others, or to function collaboratively and look more like attempts at control? A failure of vision is another self-defeating defect where "business as usual" reigns and the church community is focused on looking after itself in ways it has always done. We may ourselves be part of those failures, or we may be complicit, however regretfully, in the failures of others.

Social Dimension

The social dimension is our involvement in the wider society around us, beyond the Christian community. We can be thankful that we live in a largely peaceful society, that we live in a democracy not based on a principle that some people exist simply to serve others, i.e. that does not accept rule by kings, dictators, or some privileged elite as most societies have done in the past and many still do today. We have many generous people and organisations who work for the good of others and for a better society. This is not just a hedonistic, self-serving society. 

Yet the defects in our society are also evident. The gap between wealthy and poor with the suffering it causes is now obvious and documented. Our attitudes and our politics allow this to continue. The issues of social injustice immediately close to hand in our society, and even more desperately overseas, call us to a change in attitude and action.

Environmental Dimension

The environmental dimension of our lives is our inter-dependence with the other beings, especially the living beings, which make up the planet Earth. We can be thankful today for the "green" movements that have become part of our politics. A few decades ago these were fringe movements, but have now become mainstream. We can be thankful for the information that the environmental sciences have now made available. From this come calls to change our relationship to our environment. Climate change is perhaps the biggest public item at the present time. Many elements go into the human causes of climate change. Many of these we can do something about, but not without a change of lifestyle and public support for more environmentally friendly corporations and public policy.

Lent is about our ability to be thankful and out of this to see the things we need to change. It invites us to find solutions by the time we get to Easter. It is not just about personal changes. It is about those several dimensions of our lives that make us fully living persons within the church, in society, and as participants in God’s wider creation. "Live simply that others may simply live."

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 190 February 2015: 6-7