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News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
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March 2006
Patrick Yu
I saw a commercial on television recently. Please do not ask why it caught my attention, but the commercial has to do with male baldness. It did not flog the usual transplant or chemical stimulant. In fact it did not promise to grow one strand of hair. Instead, it was some kind of spray-on cosmetic, giving a whole new meaning to the term hair spray!
This commercial is a good indicator of the spirit of the age. To get ahead in life, we must appear to be more than we really are. It has become essential to learn how to cover up our weaknesses. What goes for cosmetics goes for other areas of life as well. For example, we learn to put our best foot forward in a job interview, or on our first date.
The trouble is that cosmetics not only make us more appealing to others, they can also hide our true face from ourselves. We can turn our face too quickly from the mirror, rejecting those things which are not pretty, or strong, or charming. We are reluctant to face or accept the unpleasant things about us, and certainly we want to hide them from others.
My guess is that many of us even want to hide these things from God. When I talk to parishioners who were going through crisis and stopped coming to church, the majority of them said something like, “I don’t want to cry in church.” What a revealing sentiment! One can only worship with the community when one is well. Kindly handle your sadness and anger privately, please. Alas, the cosmetic culture has affected our spirits as well!
Putting ashes on your forehead is a kind of reverse cosmetic. Ashes make people look funny, if not ugly. Imagine doing that deliberately! But that was what people did in the Old Testament. They put ashes on themselves when they mourned, or when they were truly contrite. By putting ashes on the outside, they let the ashes inside show; they wanted to reveal the impermanence of life, the bitterness, that they could not hold it together.
This Ash Wednesday, you have an opportunity to come forward and have ashes put on your forehead. This symbolic act is consistent with the tone of this day. Indeed, throughout Lent you will be invited to look at the unpleasant side, the sinful side of life. We will face the occasions when we failed to live up to what we can be: to God, to ourselves and to others.
Now I want you to think carefully before you simply go up out of habit or peer pressure. Why would anyone want to make oneself look funny? Why would anyone want to dwell on the unpleasant side of life, a kind of reverse positive thinking?
We do this because God wants to make us truly beautiful. God’s will and plan for each one of us is to grow into mature, splendid men and women, into the full image of Jesus. God’s plan is not just to cover up our flaws; he wants to make us new. It is real hair, not just hair spray, which is being advertised! But we cannot grow without facing our shadows, sometimes accepting them and integrating them into the self, sometimes by turning from them and, with God’s help, getting rid of them altogether.
Now pay attention because this is very important. Do not begin with your flaws and your sins. We have too many defenses to see them clearly or deal with them constructively. Instead, begin with God and God’s love for you. It is only when we are fully accepted that we can even acknowledge that there are problems. So much of psychotherapy is the re-establishment of a basic, trusting relationship. The company of accepting people is a necessary condition for healthy change. And in and through all of that, experience the deep and life-giving love of God, which is the ground of all things. In that love we can face ourselves and we can change for the better.
So Lent is not just a penitential season. It is a season of preparation for Easter by opening ourselves to God’s light. We get in touch with God’s love by the discipline of prayer, beginning with praise and thanksgiving, then moving on to confession and repentance. We fast in Lent, not as a punishment for doing bad things, but because we want to simplify our lives to concentrate on the important things, including looking at ourselves in the mirror.
Jesus said to fast internally. It means to deliberately stand in God’s light, honestly and alone. We will wipe off the ashes from our forehead. But the process of facing God is an ongoing spiritual task in Lent. I invite you to begin early, perhaps sometime this week. In prayer and silence, ask yourself these questions: Where am I? Do I need to reclaim God’s love? Am I already sure of that love so that I can proceed to examine my life? Do I know where I should go, and what I should do, but simply lack the will and the strength to carry it out? You need to do that work personally, but sometimes, if you have someone you really trust, you can share and work it out together.
May you grow more beautiful, truly beautiful, for Easter!
The Rev. Patrick Yu is the bishop- region of the Diocese of Toronto. |
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