my lenten koan: what did you get in your lenten basket?

i grew up in the southern baptist south.   we called the sunday before easter palm sunday, but we had no idea why, really.  the sermon was likely to be from the book of kings.  our pastor had a fixation on jezebel.  on easter we all wore new clothes, and there was usually a "contata," although not always.  it was easier to get enough voices for the real holiday, christmas.  we didn't celebrate it, but all of the theology of redemption we had was centered around good friday, so easter was left to the super market and department stores.  we got easter baskets.

when i began to enter the "big church," at all saints' episcopal in memphis, the membership entertained a wonderful mix of theologies:  some were catholic and prayed through the church year with great devotion.  some were evangelicans who thought the church year a bit too pappish.  some thought easter baskets were the work of the devil.  some "gave up" something for lent.

as i have come to appreciate the breadth of traditional christianity, i have come to look at lent not as a time of giving up anything, but as a period of particular grace.  we let go of some things so our hands and hearts will have more room to hold more.  fasting, alsm, and prayers are gifts given to us so we may more closely participate in the life of our lord.

many of the desert saints wove baskets as they prayed.  it kept their bodies occupied so the would not be distracted, and they sold them to support themselves.  so i have come to think of lent as the time of baskets, more than easter.  and i encourage you to join me in thinking of what has been given us in our lenten baskets this year.

my koan of this year has been how to understand the land in which i live as holy ground.  this was an amazingly koan in that every day in the office or the liturgy there were comments on it.  this morning, for instance, from the reading for the epistle:

"who is among you tht feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light?  let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his god."  (isaiah 50)

somewhat to my surprise, the biggest gift in my lenten basket has been obedience.  walking requires listening.  this does not seem a popular virtue these days.  the american episcopal church has excised from psalm 95 the verses which seem to me to distill my "solution" to my lenten koan:

"today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts
as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness;
when your fathers tempted me,
proved me, and saw my works.
forty years long was i grieved with this generation, and said,
it is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways:
unto whom i sware in my wrath,
that they should not enter into my rest."