I do not know when events on the church calendar became more important to me than other holidays. Perhaps the change occurred when I started using hair dye on grey strands. The Wind and Fire day of Pentecost happens near my birthdays, and the Holy Spirit’s story is a lot more exciting than the torch of candles on birthday cakes. Two calendar occasions observed currently are: Ash Wednesday/Lent and Valentine’s Day. These holidays trigger thoughts of volcanoes. “Volcanoes?” you ask. Let’s just say God has been placing volcanoes in my life like blinking billboards.
Last month I traipsed around several Costa Rican volcanoes–extinct, dormant and much alive. A volcano’s capacity to destroy is balanced by the beauty that occurs in its explosive aftermath. Volcanic soil produces the richest vegetation.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., a two-year-old convinces me to play Pixar’s “Lava Love” video over and over again. Uku, the male volcano, passes his years smoking and singing his song of wishful love. We smile as dolphins and turtles play nearby. Time passes, and Uku sinks into the ocean with his hopes snuffed out. During this part of the cartoon, the two-year-old catches her breath, her eyes widen, and the frown moves to sadness.
“Sometimes,” I whisper, “our stories are sad in the middle too.” Soon, however, she breaks out into a big smile as female volcano Lele starts singing Uku’s song.
Their love explodes and results in both volcanoes living together side by side. Hopeful longing bears the fruit of joyful love.
During Lent’s 40 days (plus the Sundays before Easter), followers of Jesus live with hopeful longing. The journey begins with “Ash” Wednesday, when believers submit to an ash cross smeared across their foreheads. Ashes represent
our mortality—our inability to save ourselves from eternal death. It’s not a pretty truth, that our meanness, apathy, selfishness, pride, etc., are the reasons Jesus died. None of this gunk deserves to be taken into eternity, and we each are filled with it. This past Wednesday, with many others, I tearfully declared, “I am the one,” (whose sins Jesus bore), and the person marking me with a cross responded, “As am I. Praise God for His redeeming love.”
If you don’t observe Lent, that’s okay. Lent is simply a big Valentine: Jesus gave; we receive. This 40-day pocket of time, however, offers an opportunity. A few days ago I listened to an audio interview with David Steindl-Rast, a wise, old Benedictine monk who uses exploding volcanoes as a metaphor for spiritual vitality.
Who doesn’t want to be vital?
Lent could be our season of patient attentiveness, listening, reflecting, confessing to the One who never leaves us. On the outside, life seems normal, routine. But on the inside, in your prayer time, there is activity– moving lava, building pressure, waiting for the moment of resurrection when the top blows off and nothing is the same. Sometimes, we need a radical shift in the geography. Maybe your Lenten season and Easter will be like a living volcano.
It is your job to figure out how that plays out. I’m working through it too. But during the process I keep thinking of Jesus’ words, “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them” (Mark 11:23 NIV).