Lent I | A Different Kind of Fast
“Why spend money for what isn’t food, and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy.
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest of feasts. Listen and come to me; listen, and you will live.
”
AN INVITATION TO FAST FROM MULITASKING AND INATTENTION…
We are tempted to think that in our busy lives multitasking will somehow make us more efficient, productive and happy. We scatter our gaze between so many things, but don’t we discover that inattention leaves us dissatisfied and undernourished? Writer Cole Arthur Riley puts it this way: “We have found ourselves too busy for beauty. We spin our bodies into chaos with the the habits and expectations of the dominating culture, giving and doing and working.” Distraction is seductive because it makes no demands on us, but ultimately our deep hunger for what is true, beautiful and holy calls us through the veil of our diversions – if only we will listen.
… AND EMBRACE FULL PRESENCE TO THE MOMENT
God invites us to fully experience our inner and outer lives, so filled with grace and beauty, pain and forgiveness. God calls us to behold --- not to stare or to glance, not take a quick scan or a presuming look, but to see with the reflective and reverential quality that is beholding. When we behold, we release our expectations of what we think we will see and receive what is actually there; in the process, everything can shift. We simply cannot multitask and behold at the same time. Seeing this way takes time and patience.
Riley describes the loving looking that God desires for us: “a fidelity to beholding the divine in all things. In the field, on the walk home, sitting under an oak tree that hugs my house. A sacred attention.” (from This Here Flesh)
This week of Lent, might we fast from multitasking and inattention – in order to behold? Let us listen to our true hunger for a slow and spacious way of seeing God and the world.
You can begin right now by taking 8 minutes and 37 seconds to listen to The Jesus Collective sing, “Behold the Beauty.”
This reflection is adapted from A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding our True Hungers in Lent, Christine Valters Paintner.
*Image by Kreg Yingst. Slowness & Pausing, original block print.