So if you’ve been wondering why I’ve posted less the last few weeks, this post may explain some of it.
I’ve practiced Lent in years past, but not really. It was more like Lent with training wheels. I was never at a church that made a big deal of the church calendar and, though I craved it personally, liking the idea that time itself is shaped by the life of Christ and his bride, I never was able to experience high church Lent–that is, Lent with my whole, local congregation celebrated in symbol, ritual, and worship. But last summer, we began going to an Episcopal church, so this year, the training wheels were off and so was I.Here I give a review of two of many things that I learned while practicing Lent.
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Ash Wednesday service was one of the most profound experiences of mourning and hope that I’ve had maybe ever. I’m still reeling from it. The ashes marked on all of us, every kneeling soul felt like a mark for execution. We were all going to die. It was bleak. Honestly, I felt rage. I wanted to go knock the ashes out of the priest’s hand. Could not one be spared the curse that he spoke over us- even the babies were marked! The sanctuary was perfectly silent and I wanted to scream “Do you people know what is going on here? We are being marked for the slaughter by God himself!” I wanted to beat on the altar and cry foul, but like the rest I acted like a civilized person preparing for my funeral. But then, as I knelt, preparing to take the Eucharist, angry at death and ashes and black robes, it dawned on me that Christ himself was marked by the same execution ashes. The cross on my forehead was not a stranger to God. His own holy forehead was marked, but ever so much deeper and darker and with blood. And I knew that the greatest human suffering on earth was entered into and experienced to the full by our Rescuer. As I took the Holy meal, I was overwhelmed by God’s grace. He had submitted himself to the curse and broken it open to give us life.
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After Ash Wednesday, the church practiced Lent together. Many friends of mine fasted for some period of time and from all or certain foods. I have a minor but chronic medical condition that prevents me from fasting (I learned this after I tried to fast five years ago and made it two meals–we’re talking like only 10 hours here–and ended up in the Emergency Room dehydrated from vomiting). So I looked at my life and what I consume, and really what I consume is input, specifically media input. We don’t have a TV, but I still download episodes of some of my favorite shows; we watch movies; I listen to NPR like it is aural crack; and I surf. So I gave it up.
Now, I cannot say that I really went without any input for 40 days. I didn’t. I had moments of insanity when I binged on political blogs and had unavoidable run-ins with badly written Disney TV specials with my four year old niece, but, all in all, my time spent around screens and Terry Gross significantly decreased. It was a fascinating experiment because, like food, the very beginning of the media fast was no sweat, but also like food, (to my surprise) after a week or so without media input I began to crave it with a nearly neurotic longing. However, getting away from it is the best way to see the damage that all this input wrought in me–in all of us.
During my fast, I read Marva Dawn’s A Royal Waste of Time. In one of the very best chapters in an overall great (though overly wordy) book, she looks at the influence of TV and the web on our culture and, specifically, on our churches. I won’t outline the whole chapter here—you ought to read the book–but she lists twelve or so areas of fall-out from our media saturation and along with discussing changing brain chemistry in young children and the blinding assault of advertising and commercialism, she discusses insightfully what she calls the low information-action ratio of TV and blogs. Both television and the web connect us to a world of information, but give us very little idea of how to respond to the information that they give us. Therefore, we are trained to imbibe information passively. Whether the information be about tales of suffering in another country or down the street or the book of Luke, we are taught to take in the information and change nothing (or little) about our lives or our world. This low information to action ratio has enormous impact on how we live, worship, and receive the truths in the scripture.
Now it is Easter and I have begun slowly to venture into the world of blog-reading and NPR-listening again, but the time away makes my experience of media richer; it is much more aware and nuanced now. I am grateful for having means of input (especially NPR), but I am even more wary of media saturation than I was in January (and I was pretty wary then.) The bottom line is this: we are all being indoctrinated or trained by something all the time. As believers, we do well to be cautious and wise about what is primarily shaping us. Is it rhythms of worship and service, the scripture, and the community of saints or TV, blogs, and radio? Fundamentalists may decry violence, sexual immorality, and other woes of media (and this is often legitimate), but TV and the web’s more profound danger is how it trains us to be passive consumers of everything–information, communities, resources, people, and God. Like fasting from food, fasting from input can often lead to nourishing insight, wisdom, and worship. And practicing Lent with my church makes Easter all the more celebratory.
-thw
