I used to hate Lent. It seemed to last forever. It seemed to focus only on how bad we were, and because we were so bad, it took Jesus’s torture and death on the cross to make God not hate us anymore.
So, this week, on another edition of “Real House-monks of Dormont, Pennsylvania,” it was my goal to find God’s presence and more fully witness and experience God’s love for me. I needed to know more viscerally that God forgives me, that God wants good things for me, that, heck, God might even like me. So, while the dishes were still dirty in the sink, while the cat box was overflowing, and Dan was trying to wrestle the kids into pairs of clean underwear for the first time this week, I settled in to my little prayer corner. I put on my pajamas. Pulled up the covers in my bed and got comfortable. Because, I mean, I’m still a baby monk, not one of those who can meditate for days while standing on top of a pillar, or while walking on hot coals, or been given the ability to levitate. No. I can’t even concentrate if I my hands are dry or when I get a text message or if my jeans are too itchy. Anyway. I opened up my prayer journal. I got my favorite inky pen. I cracked my knuckles and got to work. “Dear God,” I wrote. “Help me to feel your love. Show yourself to me. Let me know you’re real.” And then I started paying attention to my breath and doing that body-scan relaxation thing, I repeated a mantra, and I waited…
No?
Ok. How about I read some stories about when Jesus saves the man on the cross next to him, or when he resurrects Lazarus, or forgives the woman accused of adultery. Those stories will help, right?
Hmm.
No?
Nothing?
Ok. Ok. Well. Maybe I need to sit up a little straighter. Maybe if I opened my lungs a little wider, breathed a little deeper.
And so I waited some more. I waited and waited for the clouds to part and the heavens to rip open and the dove to descend and to finally hear the voice of God saying to me, “This is my daughter. My beloved. In her I am well pleased.”
I tried this every day. Same thing. Get comfortable. Breathe deeply. Listen hard. Come back to the breath. Listen some more.
Still.
No dove. No voice from on high, no tangible, concrete experience of the divine. Just that fuzzy silence you hear when you’re in a quiet room trying to hear…something, anything.
When I met with my spiritual director for the week, and I gave her my report of my spiritual escapades, I told her, “Well. Not much happened. I watched this cool documentary about how we only use a tiny percentage of our brain. And Dan and I randomly heard the song we danced to at our wedding from a free concert over the internet while we were chopping vegetables and browning the sausage. And we got this really good orange in our produce delivery. And our dog ate four raisins and that freaked us out but it turned out that she was ok. And I’m kind of wondering if I might be any good as a therapist or spiritual director, but how can I if I suck so bad at listening to God? So I asked and I asked and I asked. But I didn’t hear God. God didn’t speak to me. I tried. I really tried. I’ve tried before. For years, I’ve tried. And all I get, again and again, is a whole bunch of silence.” And my spiritual director, who is worth every tiny penny I send her, said, “God is speaking to you, Jenn. God is just speaking to you…slant.”
God’s coming at me, I think, in these everyday, simple, concrete, basic, tangible ways. And I’m missing it because I’m expecting the heavens to part and the voice of God to come down and announce, in the voice of Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones, that “This is my daughter. The beloved. In her I am well pleased!”
But you know what? I don’t get doves. They don’t land gracefully on my shoulders. I don’t hear God’s voice or see visions or feel the warm hand of God on my back. I’ve never been awoken in the middle of the night to God calling my name, and I’ve never walked on water or seen the lame walk or the blind see. God is truly real to some folks in this way. And I envy them. They emerge from their baptismal waters without doubts or fears or questions or anything other than a solid and sure identity in their new life in Christ. It’s all so real for them, even when they immediately get sent out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Sometimes, it makes me feel like I’m truly missing something. That there’s something wrong with me. That I’m not doing something right or trying hard enough or concentrating or being disciplined enough. Or maybe that just happens to the smarter people? Stronger people? Kinder people? What am I missing? Do they just have better imaginations? Are they holier? How can they always be so gosh darn sure? Or maybe, just maybe, I’m not loved like they are. Maybe I really am right. Maybe God’s grace covers everyone else but me. Maybe I’ve done too many horrible things, thought too many horrible thoughts, failed to do too many good things that ended up with too many horrible consequences. Everyone else deserves the doves. But not me.
Or, Jenn. Maybe. Maybe, God just comes at you slant.
And. Maybe I’m not alone. Maybe there are others out there for whom God comes at them slant. Maybe there are others out there who get the pigeon, and not the dove?
For some of us, it’s all wilderness, all the time.
For some of us, it’s all Lent, all the time.
But that doesn’t mean that God’s not there. That doesn’t mean that God loves us any less. God speaks to us in the wilderness. God speaks to us in the Lent. God just sort of speaks kind of slant.
I remember once, maybe I was in fourth grade or something, and being a good Catholic girl, we would forgo eating meat on Fridays during Lent. Well, I went to a slumber party one Friday night, and I ate a piece of pepperoni pizza. I was mortified. I was so ashamed. Christ had given up so much for me, Christ had died on the cross to save me for my sins, and I couldn’t even appreciate it enough to remember to pick the pepperoni off first? And I still get dreams, at least once a week, where I’m back in high school, or I’ve had to go back to high school even though I’m in my forties now, and I have to take a test I haven’t studied for, or I’m failing I class I didn’t know I was registered for, or I have to not only find my locker in a maze of post-graduation building reconstruction, but I also have to remember my combination from twenty five years ago. Every day I make a list of things I need to accomplish, and every day I am super disappointed in myself that I don’t get it all done. I have mountains of books I haven’t read, piles of emails I haven’t responded to, protest marches I haven’t participated in, and you all know about my kids’ screen-time-addiction anxiety. I’m like one of those people who ask for money on the side of the road. Except I’m not holding a cardboard sign that says, “Will work for food,” or “any spare change will help,” but rather I’m holding signs that say “will work for acceptance,” or “please! Like me! A little bit helps!” Or, “Insecure. Hungry for acceptance. Looking for peace.” I never seem to have enough. I’m constantly running a sort of acceptance deficit.
But you know what, if we are looking for a place where we don’t belong, we will find it. If we are listening to hear that we aren’t loved, we will hear it. If we are thinking the thoughts that we will never be good enough, we will never be it. If we are looking and listening and thinking in all the wrong ways, we’ll miss what God is really showing us, right here, right now, in this world, in the messiness of our actual lives.
What if God is still speaking to us, not just right before we’re sent out into the wilderness, but while we’re actually in the wilderness? What if our forty days of Lent are not just about being tempted by Satan to eat that piece of pepperoni pizza or indulge in that piece of chocolate or keep a perfect meditative discipline? But what if it’s about hearing God in all the things? What if it’s seeing that God comes to us in all the things? We focus on the temptations of Satan, and we forget the wild animals. We forget the angels that attend to us. We forget the fresh air and the quiet solitude and the unknown adventure of it all. What if, sure, for some of us, we get to hear God’s love for us straight from God’s mouth directly into our ears and it permeates our hearts in such a way that we will never doubt again. But what if God comes to us as pigeons in our own wildernesses, too?
But if we demand doves, and insist on doves, and only count the doves, we will miss it. We will miss the presence of God in our midst. We will fail to hear the words we so long to hear: “This is my child. The beloved. In whom I am well pleased.”
Some of us may not get the doves, but there are pigeons everywhere.
And here’s a cool thing. The Ancient Hebrew word for “dove” is “Yonah.” And the modern Hebrew word for pigeon is…”Yonah.” They're worth the same amount when it comes to Hebrew sacrifices. Doves and pigeons are the same breed of bird - of the family Columbidae. Doves were just pigeons bred to be white in color, and because of its association with the Holy Spirit, they became symbols of purity and grace. But essentially, they’re pigeons. A city nuisance. “Rats with wings.” Scavengers who poop all over our statues and monuments and crowd around trashcans and trip us up at the bus stops and steal our fries. They’re the ones who dive bomb into the dumpsters behind our apartment buildings for leftover pizza crust.
So maybe what I’m trying to say is that it’s all the same thing. For some of us, the clouds are rent and the sky opens up and God speaks directly to us from on high. And for others of us, God comes at us slant, in the roundabout form of an extra fifteen minutes of sleep or a quiet snowfall or a sweet juicy slice of orange in the middle of February.
God spoke to Jesus, clearly and openly, and the Spirit of God landed upon him in the form of a dove. And then that same Spirit, that same dove, kicks him out into the wilderness where temptation makes it awfully hard to hear the clear, unobscured voice of God. But God was still there. In the wildness of the animals. In the serving presence of the angels. In the every day realities of hunger and thirst and trees and soil and the rising and setting sun. Maybe even in persistent doubt and insecurities and uncertainties and even in those of us who are spiritually hearing impaired. God comes to us in the wildernesses of our lives, too. In our messes. In the snowstorms that still persist in late February, and in the COVID vaccine waiting lines, and in the seemingly fruitless meditations of an undisciplined, impatient, and demanding girl who insists that God speaks to her only in one very specific, very tangible, and very loud way. God can land on us like a dove. But most of the time, God comes to me like a pigeon, on the dirty, distracted sidewalk, telling me to pay attention, pay attention to the burger wrappers in the gutters, the cigarette butts in the streets, the wads of gum that have turned black and tar-y on the asphalt. It’s all still God. It’s all still “I love you”s and “you’re good enough”s and “I’m here”s. God still comes to us, even when God comes to us slant.
This Lent, let’s look for God in the wilderness. In the temptations. In the wild animals. In the small moments when angels attend to us. Let’s find God in the pigeons.
Emily Dickinson says it better and much more succinctly:
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –
Thanks be to God.
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