Discover Contemplation With the Parables & Your Loved OnesSample

As a child, I couldn’t help but equate the word “Lent” with the fluffy blue-gray matter known as “lint,” the fibers from towels and clothing that my mother made sure we collected from the dryer basket after each load of clothes was emptied. The remnants. The leftovers. The cast-offs. So I was surprised to learn years later in graduate school that the etymology of the word “Lent” actually comes from the Old English lecten, which means spring season. Orthodox Christians describe Lent as an atmosphere of “bright sadness”—a beautiful expression that helps me grasp how mourning can lead to intense joy. Only those cold, brown-gray branches of winter can bring us to those dazzling bright green branches of spring.

The Lenten season begins with the liturgy of Ash Wednesday and, depending on one’s tradition, concludes on Maundy Thursday or Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Ashes for Ash Wednesday are made from the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday service, signaling the intentionality of a ritual to remind us of renewal and reuse. Ash Wednesday, the ensuing Lenten seasons, and the Good Friday liturgies are times when we go down to the dead only to find rebirth and new life.

During Lent a few years ago, Susan, our chapel’s director of community life and education, began a composting initiative. Compost comes from Old French and Latin, and is related to compose, to putting something together. My sister, a master gardener, has inspired me to compost in our own yard, a daily practice that I hope teaches my boys lessons about renewal as it nurtures our small urban yard and pollinator garden with a rich offering of soil. Composting is transforming waste matter like banana peels, coffee grounds, lettuce heads, yard scraps, cardboard, and even that dryer lint from natural fibers into resources, a rich offering that makes the soil more fertile. Composting is an ordinary sacred act reminding humans that we can help out with the humus! Composting is evidence that creation is not a historical event but an unfolding process. We are here to care for the soil. And furthermore, we are the soil; we are dust and to dust we shall return. We are bonded to the soil through that first creation story where Adam is created out of the dirt. In City of God, Augustine even describes human beings as terra animata, animated Earth.

Wonder together: During the season of springtime, the very Earth animates and transforms before our eyes. During the “bright sadness” of the Lenten season, humans transform. Consider your own relationship with Earth. Do you feel connected to the soil? How? Or why not? Have you heard about the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that many homes and other indoor environments are too clean and that a little dirt actually stimulates a healthy immune system to develop? How might “this fragile Earth, our island home”* embody hope, health, and resurrection during these two overlapping seasons of springtime and Lent? There’s no doubt that food waste contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Could you start a composting initiative at your school, workplace, or church?

Contemplate the parable of the lost sheep and efforts to bring matter to the compost heap (Matthew 18:10-14).

*The Book of Common Prayer, Eucharistic Prayer C