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Lent at Fifty

 

Growing up Southern Baptist I did not know much about Lent.  I am grateful for the years I have spent as an adult in Metropolitan Community Churches where I have learned about the rhythms of the Christian liturgical year.  Even though Lent comes around year after year, I find that I enter into this season of repentance and self examination differently each year.

 

Some years I struggle with an annoying habit.  Other years I have struggled with learning to live by grace.  This Lent of 2006 will be different than all the others before it or after it.  It is different because I have just turned fifty years old. 

 

Lent at fifty.  What is so significant about that?  Well I don’t know about you, but moving into my fifties has been an invitation in humility and self knowledge, which according to St. Teresa of Avila are the same thing.  As I have grown older I have had to learn a new relationship with my body.  And I am learning a new relationship with myself.

 

It’s like the minute I had my fiftieth birthday a great cosmic mirror was held up in front of me.  I have been invited to take a long hard look at my ways of being in the world.  I have found that the prayer that has naturally risen on my lips and in my heart during this season of my life is what is often called The Serenity Prayer:  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

 

I had never paid much attention to this prayer…until I turned fifty.  I know the prayer has been helpful to many people who struggle with addictions.  But it also reflects the wisdom and lessons of the aging process: as we get older we are invited to make peace with ourselves.

 

I turned fifty in October of 2005 and as I have prayed the Serenity Prayer through the end of the year and on into Ash Wednesday I have found that it is a wonderful Lenten prayer too.  Isn’t that what Lent is all about: discerning those areas in our lives that need to change and asking God for the courage and wisdom to make those changes?

 

Peace,

Mona