As Lent begins today, and Christians around the world enter into a season of preparation for Easter, I find myself once again simultaneously drawn to and wary of the call to sacrifice and penitence that the season is borne on. With millions of other Roman Catholics, I will attend Ash Wednesday Mass to receive a cross of soft ashes on my forehead, and be told “you are born from dust and to dust you will return” — an ontological statement I find extraordinarily comforting, but at the same time perplexing, given that Catholic theology of the afterlife, as I have always understood it, is decidedly void of dust.
During this holy season, Christians around the world are encouraged to begin the season ‘giving up’ something for the greater glory of God — some popular choices are always chocolate, swearing, meat, the ubiquitous demigod Facebook . . .
Because of the origins of the religious tradition, our idea of abstaining, or ‘giving up’ something is linked directly to the idea of penitential sacrifice. Within some Christian denominations, the rationale for this giving up is rather symbolic: We should suffer as Jesus suffered, wandering for 40 days in the desert before giving himself in the ultimate act of sacrifice for our sins. In others, it is an act of expulsion and redemption: We should suffer, to remind ourselves of our sinfulness and need for grace.
I don’t really feel comfortable with either of these accounts. I instead view ‘giving up’ as an act of beautiful sharing and of generosity, and certain scenarios always come to mind — a mother extending her newborn child toward the child’s father so that they may gaze on it together, a retired gardener taking the spoils of his labor and sharing them with neighbors, a young person fasting until nightfall in solidarity with the poor and hungry around the world.
Giving up — literally, to offer heavenward, is an act of joyous giving, the benediction — or good speech — that one pronounces simply by celebrating the bounty of one’s labor and one’s life. Either by cultivating one’s mindfulness towards what God has given you, or by sharing those gifts with others is, to me, a most beautiful Lenten rite.
So what does this have to do with reading together at home? Everything.
How many of us parents really take the time at the end of the day to sit with our children and be present to them, and the story, in the moment as they read to us or we read to them? How many of us are capable of sharing stories together without looking at our watches or getting impatient?
In 2004, Carl Honoré published a book calling for a ‘slow reading’ movement after he caught himself about to buy a collection of “one-minute bedtime stories” to read to his children. In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Changing the Cult of Speed, he argues that slow reading— not just ‘finding,’ but mindfully making the time to read deliberately, alone or together, changes the very fabric of our relationships with one another, with time, and with the stories themselves, enriching those relationships and bringing them to bear on the future.
We exist in a world that is increasingly productivity driven, where the mantra ‘hurry up’ drives every activity, mediates every relationship. . . even those at home. As a consequence we become wrapped up in routine activity, forgetting to draw attention toward the blessings we have in our family, the blessings we create within those relationships we create within our homes, and offer back up to God, from what we’ve been given.
It’s why this year, I will be honoring the call to Lent by ‘giving up’ more time to read with my family — out loud, energetically, allowing for questions and interruptions, in crazy voices and accents. Carving out a more hallowed space for the other people in my life, and the stories that bind us together, is the best way I know how of carving out a more hallowed space for God in this season of preparation.
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