Lent:

About the Book

This book began in Lent as a way to continue my own engagement with the season. I am by temperament and training a philosopher whose life and work have been shaped by moments of mystic communion with that which can’t be adequately described or named and is, I presume, what is pointed to by the word “god.” I have, wherever possible, used a word other than “god” to refer to the framing mystery of our lives—the horizon that draws us toward reverence, humility, and compassion. The challenge I posed for myself was to try to describe the Lenten practices in the way I have experienced them—a way I hope will be useful for any spiritual seeker as well as not opposed to Christianity for those who actively participate in that tradition. To that end, I have attempted to explore ways in which Lent, a season in the Christian year, has universal applications for human life and development. This book attempts to enunciate ways in which the season itself—with its impetus, its dynamics, and its practices—has a significance and a usefulness that is more universal than that of any single religious tradition. I am indebted to Hinduism for its understanding of renunciation as giving up the lesser for the sake of the greater. I am indebted to Buddhism for its insights about how the mind works and how it can be trained to be more present and compassionate. And I am indebted to the Catholic Eucharist, where the transforming vision is not only celebrated but also eaten as food. A word about style: the primary purpose of the book is to evoke, not to explain. That is why there are wide margins and a limited number of words per page. To get the most value from this book, there must be engagement, dialogue with, and reflection on one’s own experiences as well as on the spiritual truths found in the world’s religions. The most important words in the book may be the ones the reader writes in the margins or in a journal—an evoked response to the printed words. In that way, Lent can become a lived experience not just for Christians.

About the Author

I was raised on an Iowa farm and had extensive leisure time for responding to the vastness of land and sky as well as the changing patterns of seasons and of light and dark. I had published a philosophically tinged set of recollections, Earth, Air, Fire, and Water: Recollections of a Rural Childhood (Outskirts Press). The experience that most shaped my life was a profound mystic awareness that began to occur, though not frequently, in my childhood. It found nourishment and some semblance of understanding in the Methodist church my family attended. However, the challenge of philosophy encountered in college led to a temporary suspension of the use of religious language until such time as I could find a theoretical basis for the experiences I had had. It was the study of phenomenology in graduate school that provided the needed link. The experience of the sacred is prior to all expressions of it. Words are a relative latecomer, following upon ritual. It was this realization that later led me to Catholicism. The study of philosophy has long been important to me because I was good at it. But later, primarily through the experience of teaching philosophy at a public high school, I saw how vital philosophical questioning and exploration can be to human development. Socrates became a mentor of mine for several reasons: the importance of questions, the assumption that people have innate wisdom that questions can evoke, and his abiding emphasis on the mystery that rims all human knowing. Though I took early retirement from high school teaching, I continue to teach philosophy in various older-adult programs. I have developed an engaging style that uses material to evoke reflection and insights on the part of participants. I teach out of the conviction, which I know from personal experience to be true, that each of us is the bearer of wisdom and that reality is vaster than all creeds. Everything I write is an attempt to evoke reflection and insight in the minds and lives of the readers. The care of the soul—whatever one means by “soul”—should be, as Socrates pointed out, the top priority of a human being. This soul care requires the courage to question as well as an openness to insights however and whenever they appear.