A Slow Grow
by: Karen Stiller
The word Lent is written with white paint and large letters on some of the neighbourhood streets in Ottawa, where I live. In French, Lent means slow. Printed on quiet roads, it is an admonition to drivers in their cars. You don’t have to drive so fast. Slow down.
The first time I noticed lent on the road, we had only recently moved to the city. I was on my way to a volunteer gig as a therapy dog team with my dog Dewey at a local retirement home. My big dog and I would spend an hour every Wednesday visiting with women mostly, because that is who is usually left when you get to those very old ages. Dewey licked their beautiful, gnarled hands. They scratched his head and cooed in his soft, floppy ears.
The terrible truth is, as touching as it could be, sometimes I was bored. I cringe even as I write that. I know how bad this sounds.
Each week I reintroduced Dewey to the group and repeated his name until I gave up and they called him Spewey, Louis or Huey. Dewey didn’t care. I walked around the same circle of sometimes dozing people over and over again, and visited the same small rooms for the same small talk.
Some weeks, the hour crawled by on its hands and knees.
And when I walked back home every single week, I was so glad I went.
This is as predictable as the rain, isn’t it? We learn this lesson again and again, and still we forget that hard things can be good things. Boring can bring bounty. Slow might steep something beautiful in our lives.
Lent, these weeks before Easter, the time we are in right now, is like that too. It is meant to feel slow and long and, honestly, a little bit painful. It’s designed that way. We are encouraged to give things up that we enjoy and maybe embrace a few things that we do not, or both.
I’m married to an Anglican priest, and in our church Lent kicks off with Ash Wednesday, a sombre service if ever there was one. “I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent,” my husband reads, “…by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and alms-giving; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And to make a right beginning, let us now pray for grace, that we may faithfully keep this Lent.”
Self-examination and repentance – if Lent was a brand those would be key words – are not meant to be fun. Fasting and alms-giving (other hallmarks of a traditional Lent) imply discomfort. As people who have lived through these long past months of Covid-19, with all its lockdowns and distancing and heart breaks, we know that we have learned, even as we have lost.
I am reminded of that wonderful and promising verse in Philippians where Paul writes, “…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
There is something good growing in these long days and this dark soil, because we have a good Gardener. That is the promise of Lent, and the guarantee of grace.
Long, slow, quiet spiritual work is worth it, like the hard things almost always seem to be. So, sister, continue to embrace this slowing down and going deep time, even just for a little bit more. Keep Lent for another moment, and then a few more.
Karen Stiller is the author of The Minister’s Wife: a memoir of faith, doubt, loneliness, friendship and more (Tyndale House, 2020); a freelance writer and a senior editor of Faith Today magazine. Her work has appeared in The Walrus, Reader’s Digest and many other publications. She is co-author of Craft, Cost & Call: How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer (2019) along with other books about the Church in Canada and the world.
She hosts the Faith Today podcast and moderates the Religion and Society series at the University of Toronto, a debate series between leading atheists and theologians. She lives in Ottawa and has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non Fiction from University of King’s College, Halifax. www.karenstiller.com