Entering into Lent, Essentially

With days filled with lists of things to do and struggles for achievements of one kind or another, how are we to know what is “essential” and what “inessential”?   This time of Lent, which began last week with Ash Wednesday, brings a question like this forward.  It’s been sitting there quietly all along, of course, not making a fuss, but now the season escorts it gently up to the front of the room so that we might get a good look at it.

My husband –- a clergyman and a deep thinker by nature– recently spent a day at a favorite destination:  The Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastery in Cambridge, right on the Charles River.  He took me there before we were married, and it was like no place I had ever been, that is for sure.  The whole experience of walking through bustling Harvard Square, with everyone heading to their important business, and then entering a sanctuary of almost pure quiet was startling enough.  And I remember experiencing incense there for the first time; it was as if I’d been taken back centuries, all of a sudden.  In fact, when I got inside the stone walls, I understood that my relationship to my fiance would bring me face to face with a whole new-to-me set of ancient traditions, almost as if they were his family members.

Last week, Rob brought home a simple rectangular card with a picture of a cross, surrounded by beautiful bright colored ribbons, on one side and several paragraphs entitled “Lenten Traditions” on the other.   The first section of this almost made me think that the monks have been reading my blog.  Here it is:

Fasting

This Lent let go of the inessential to hold fast to what is essential.  If you abstain from food, ask what you hunger for.  Or fast from speed to embrace slowness; fast from indifference to awaken to wonder.

How interesting that they use the word “fast” in two different ways here, first of all.  And also that they are recommending doing something that’s the opposite of what we usually do, inferring that we have been missing the mark by maintaining so many “inessential” practices.  The problem for most of us, it seems to me, is that usually it’s not at all clear what’s what – there are no signs labeling the ways we spend our time, no voices ringing out to say “No, don’t do that –this is much more important in the long run.”

For me, reading this card was particularly interesting because I have just accepted a new teaching position at a school that is called “Essential.”   A member of the Coalition of Essential Schools, started in the mid-80’s by Theodore Sizer, this school abides by ten Common Principles (http://www.essentialschools.org) that arose after much study of what makes a high school actually work.  Students in these schools are expected to master “essential skills” and explore “essential questions” – there is an emphasis on promoting interdisciplinary intellectual achievement, in a climate of really knowing each student, rather than just covering the material.  I will be eager to see if my colleagues and I really can “hold fast to what is essential” in education and recognize when the “inessential” — perhaps in the form of too many dead-end answers or too much busy work — is still taking up too much space.

And then the word pops up in other funny places, too.  There’s a store near where we live that sells tableware, lovely sheets of paper, pretty things from France, a special line of books, children’s toys. I even saw a book with this title:  The Perfect Apron.  The place is called “Essentials,” naturally.  Writing a review on a website, one customer admits to being perfectly aware that the brightly colored things are all unnecessary, but says,  “I walk into that store and don’t know how I can live my life without them.”

In expressing this sentiment, she has something in common with Shakespeare’s King Lear:  when his cruel daughters persist in questioning his “need” for knights and servants to attend him (Act II, Scene 4), he objects angrily with: “O, reason not the need.”  Indeed, what kind of a life would we all have if we eliminated most everything that brought us extra pleasures?

I prefer to think of Lent not as a time of deprivation, but as a time of re-clarification.  Keeping my mind on what makes an “essential” thing, I plan to choose activities that enable me to go deeper or higher in some way:  instead of doing yet another errand in the car, for instance, I’ll seek time for fuller conversations with people–starting with my own family members.  I will look honestly at what I do that might seem like service (being on a committee, perhaps) and what I can do to really be of service (visiting someone who is lonely).  And, if a brightly colored thing happens to make my heart leap, or perhaps someone else’s, I may not buy it— but I won’t dismiss it as “inessential” too quickly, either.