Saturday, March 28, 1998

Spiritual discipline not very popular these days

By Tom Schaefer / Knight Ridder Newspapers

It's getting harder and harder to talk about spiritual disciplines. Too many distractions, it seems, keep people from getting in to the spirit of the Lenten season.

You remember Lent: a time to focus on prayer and fasting in remembrance of Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness and to prepare for the Easter celebration (April 12).

Because each of us must contend with his or her own distractions, I asked readers to tell me what they did to add a spiritual dimension to the season.

With their help, perhaps each of us can find some divine direction to rise above the often spiritless ways many of us live.

A gentleman who is a member of an Eastern Orthodox church recounts his church's tradition of journeying through the season with other believers. It begins, he says, with each member bowing before another and asking for forgiveness. It continues with a 40-day fast that includes avoidance of dairy products, meat, poultry, fish and wine and can include abstinence from sexual relations.

"We embrace these limitations so that we may focus our hearts in prayer to God and turn our hands to the poor, widowed, orphaned and otherwise outcast," he writes.

A Mennonite woman from Newton, Kan., says she uses Lent to think about "one particular character flaw, first asking the Lord to let me know which one he's interested in."

This year she's trying to focus on when to accept personal blame for her actions and when not to.

"My impetus was noticing how often I was, mentally, blaming my late mother for so many difficulties I'd had as an adolescent," she said. "Yes, she could have helped me if she'd been wiser, but she wasn't. And I made my choices and reaped the consequences. My life hasn't been one long disaster, just a series of minor ones."

She says she also uses a ritual that her late husband, a Catholic, practiced. At one point in the Mass, she said, he would strike his chest and recite "through my fault, through my fault, through my own fault."

"I'm doing that several times a day this Lenten season," she says.

A Catholic man in Wichita, Kan., said attending Mass daily "is the nourishment my soul needs more than anything I can think of." He also says reading a few Psalms and portions of the Bible "is a great day's start."

In the ecclesiastical newspaper Plenteous Harvest, Bishop William Smalley urges the 18,000 members of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas to examine their lives using the baptismal covenant of the church that includes five pledges made at a person's baptism and that are renewed each time another baptism takes place.

The five are: continuing in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread (Holy Communion) and in the prayers; resisting evil and repenting of sin; proclaiming by word and example the gospel; serving Christ by loving one's neighbor; and striving for justice and respecting the dignity of others.

For those who are members of churches that use the historic creeds of the Christian Church, these suggestions can be helpful directives to follow.

And here are some other ways to put spiritual meat on your table during Lent.

Bishop Kenneth Untener of the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw, Mich., believes it takes "clear intent and it takes grit" to follow a Lenten discipline.

"Lent is 40 days of looking at our response (to God), reforming it, deepening it," he writes in U.S. Catholic magazine. He offers several practical suggestions.

"Take fasting seriously," he says. A strict reduction of the amount of food eaten can have a profound impact. "Fasting in itself doesn't make things right," he says. "It helps us see what things need to be made right."

"Step up your almsgiving," he urges. Untener defines alms as "a kind gift for someone in need."

"Give away a chunk of money. Clear out some of your possessions. Take a close look at how you spend your time," he says.

And rediscover the rich traditions of prayer: meditation, contemplation, prayer of the heart, to name a few.

"Try them out and spend 15 minutes each day enjoying them," he says.

Even though Easter is two weeks away, it's not too late to begin your own Lenten discipline. In fact, no matter what your religious tradition is, it's never too late to decide to carve out time for spiritual exercises that nourish the spirit.

Just don't let distractions get the better of good intentions.

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(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer@wichitaeagle.com )

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(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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