April is the cruelest month...” When I used to teach T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” to North Carolina high school students, they always stopped right there at the first line in consternation.
How could anyone think spring is cruel? The poem goes on to speak longingly of winter:
“Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers.” I have to admit, I’ve been ready for warm weather since about Jan. 6, so I can appreciate how these verses seem to contradict a Southerner’s deep seated dislike of cold. However, “The Wasteland” is a poem about a spiritual wasteland in our hearts, and each uncomfortable image needles us into self-reflection.
I’m frequently afraid of a spiritual spring. Looking back, I can see that my greatest spiritual growth has often come out of seasons of suffering, loss, loneliness and hard work. Yet it’s hard to voluntarily enter into a season of discomfort, even knowing that the results could transform me.
Lent is a time to till the soil of our hearts. We disturb the status quo, seek to root out weeds of sin and open up the soil to the life-giving rain of grace that God hopes to send us. We have to fertilize the good things growing in us with prayer, silence and patience.
A priest once counseled me that the greatest tool the devils uses to ruin love within a family and marriage is a spirit of resentment. We so easily grasp at what is comfortable and known, even if we don’t like it and even if we know it is hardly keeping the “little life” alive in our hearts. Letting go of resentment, especially in the daily struggles of our vocation, is not a one-time act. Over and over, I find myself giving in to frustration and tempted to turn to something easier than the task in front of me. In those moments, I try to invite God into those emotions and circumstances, asking Him to make known His Presence and to change my perspective. We cannot get rid of resentment unless we have an eye to the growth that is happening, as hidden as it may be. In fact, at the beginning of each new attempt to cultivate a virtue, we just have to trust that the growth is happening without any green shoots to show for it yet. During Lent, our most meaningful sacrifices will trade our distractions for intentional time spent in faithfulness to our responsibilities. These sacrifices chose to embrace the small (and large) mortifications that are already present in our lives. Only with grace can we make headway. Dorothy Day wrote frankly about the difficulties of parenting. She noted how we have mortification built into our daily lives. Speaking of a stay-at-home mother with little ones, she explains: “Here is her mortification of the senses: Her eyes are affronted by disorder, confusion, the sight of human ailments, and human functions. Her nose also; her ears tormented with discordant cries, her appetite failing often; her sense of touch in agony from fatigue and weakness.
“Her interior senses are also mortified. She is alone with her little ones, her interest adapted to theirs; she has not even the companionship of books. She has no longer the gay companions of her youth (their nerves can’t stand it). So she has solitude, and a silence from the sounds she’d like to hear, conversation, music, discussion.
“Of course there are consolations and joys. Babies and small children are pure beauty, love, joy – the truest in this world. But the thorns are there…”
I think lists of natural mortifications could just as easily be written about a working mother’s attempts to place so many needs before her own, a father’s grind at a job he doesn’t love, a parent’s self-control as he nervously encourages his teenage driver onto the interstate, a teen’s frustrations with the demands of younger siblings on her time and attention. Anyone who works with other humans experiences the refining friction inherent in relationship. Thankfully, each mess and annoyance has meaning when it’s united to the cross. Faced with courageous acceptance rather than resentment, like Our Lady standing at Calvary, those moments make our hearts fertile ground for God’s work in us.
Spiritual writer Jacques Philippe writes, “To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. ... But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.”
Let go of the winter in your hearts. Embrace the spring. You cannot imagine the beautiful plans the Master Gardener has for you.
Kelly Henson is a Catholic writer and speaker who explores the art of integrating faith into daily life. She, her husband and their four children are parishioners of Our Lady of Grace Parish in Greensboro, and she has worked for more than 15 years with teens, children and families as a missionary, youth minister and teacher. She blogs at www.kellyjhenson.com.