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Living during pandemic as Lenten practice

by Rev. Ashley Harness | Mar 22, 2020 | sermons

Scripture: Psalm 23

Good morning beloveds. How are you doing this morning? Do you know? Have you landed a bit more in your body this morning since you joined us here? I’m not really going anywhere most days, but I feel like I’m mentally running around and around in ways that are exhausting. I’m a little worried that if I actually lie down anywhere, not just a green pasture, I might not be able to get up for some time. And not just because I’m growing larger in this third trimester of pregnancy. Hyper-vigilance lives in our bodies in strange ways.

Yet even though we walk through the valley of hyper-vigilance, of anxiety, of headline news that enrages and strikes fear, of very real pandemic, God is with us, surely following us around through each day through it all with goodness and mercy. She prepares the table for the meals we make with preciously collected foods for ourselves and our beloveds. It is God’s home in whom we shelter in place ultimately, not just our own. At least so says our psalmist.

Our psalmist. Our ancient poet friend. Our mystical oddball pen pal from another era of plagues and fear thousands of years ago. What makes scripture sacred to me is the fact that people have been turning towards it with their fears and feels and broken open hearts for thousands of years. Our great, great, great, great and so many more great grand parents read or heard these poems too and surely, surely found goodness and mercy in them too. They prayed these psalms too when beloveds were sick, and surely, surely those prayers keep living in the universe somewhere.

My friends, I don’t have some big-hearted or big-brained sermon for you this morning. My mind and heart and body have been mostly just trying to get through the day each working day with a toddler at home and a mom recovering from surgery blessedly now at home also after a week in a nursing home on lockdown.

What I have is the blessing of your wisdom. Rebecca and I have tried to reach all the members of Lyndale this week to check in on how you are doing. And in checking in with you, we have found so many nuggets of how to live well in these times.

I want to share one with you from John Edberg, a long-time member who is only sporadically with us these days, but deeply connected across the distance. He said this:

“I’ve actually been thinking, these last few days, that the social experience of living “under virus siege” may be (in surprising ways) like a widespread, non-voluntary, secular version of adopting Lenten practices:  folks need to give up things they normally consume or do, consciously discipline their routines and practices in non-typical ways, slow down their pace, [and] think more than they usually might about death.”

I love this. What possibility might open for you if you could re-frame something you are doing now to keep yourself and our larger human community healthy as a spiritual practice for Lent? A way to make a little more room for you to notice the Divine surely following you around? What if we could turn the anxiety of hyper-vigilance into a noticing of bodily vulnerability and awe at the health that remains even in these times?

We won’t be able to do it all the time. But let us try to relax into our homes as dwelling places of God. This morning, we’re going to do that by sitting with this psalm with the practice of lectio divino, or seeing the scriptures. This psalm is ripe with images to help us.

So first of all, make sure you are in a comfortable position. Maybe put your coffee down. Put both feet on the floor or find a sitting position where you feel supported. And just read along silently or listen to our psalm as I read it aloud. Notice if there is a word or a phrase that shimmers or sticks with you:

The Divine is my shepherd, I shall not want.

She makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters; they restore my soul.

She leads me in right paths
for her name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I fear no evil;
for you are with me;

your rod and your staff— they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of our God my whole life long.

I’m going to read it one more time now. Let the images float over you as you find that word or phrase that sticks with you:

The Divine is my shepherd, I shall not want.

She makes me lie down in green pastures;

he leads me beside still waters; they restore my soul.

She leads me in right paths
for her name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,

I fear no evil;
for you are with me;

your rod and your staff— they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;

you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I shall dwell in the house of our God my whole life long.

Now close your eyes, as you feel comfortable and focus on the word or phrase that stuck with you. Just breathe in and out silently speaking or thinking about that word and let your mind relax.

When you notice that you are no longer distracted by thoughts, picture the psalm we’ve just been reading. Don’t reread the text, but just go with what you remember. Don’t worry about getting anything right, like what the psalmist might actually have meant or seen. Just let your imagination go with the images from your own life that emerge in relationship with the psalm. We are going to sit in this kind of waking dream for about 5-7 minutes now.

Keep your eyes closed now, but notice what you are feeling and thinking.

And now give beyond yourself those feelings and thoughts. Release them to God, or a favorite place of still waters, or a loved one in your imagination. Something beyond you.

Sit with this moment of all of us meditating together, being held by God together, for just another minute.

And when you are ready, open your eyes.

Amen.

 

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