First Sunday in Lent

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

We lead busy lives, and it can be so tempting to think that multitasking will somehow make us more efficient and productive. We bemoan not having more hours in the day, but in the hours we do have, our attention is scattered, and we’re always trying to keep up. We spread our gaze between so many demands that we may get many things done, even as we discover that checking everything off the to-do list didn’t leave us satisfied or nourished.

St. Benedict wrote wisely more than 1,500 years ago that we are called to always be beginners in the spiritual life. The landscape of the desert is often understood as a place of new beginnings; it is where Jesus began his ministry. In the desert, we are confronted with ourselves, naked and without defenses, called again and again to bring all of our broken and denied parts back into wholeness.

St. Benedict and countless other monks and nuns lived in the desert, in a cave or hut or single room in a monastery called a cell. This space was central to their journey, a place of solitude to retreat to so they could be fully present to their own experience.

For them, the cell was an outward reality, but it was also a central concept of their spirituality, a metaphor for the inner life. It was a symbol for the soul-work they and we are called to engage in, the place where we come into full presence with ourselves and all of our inner voices, emotions, and challenges, and are called not to abandon ourselves in the process through distraction or numbing.  

It is also the place where we encounter God deep in our hearts.

Distraction is seductive because it doesn’t make demands on us. But ultimately the deeper hunger for what is true and holy will call to us through the veil of our diversions. This is a lifelong journey, not something we achieve fully, but an ongoing unveiling and revealing of who we were created to be.

The desert father Abba Anthony wrote: “Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cell or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the seas, we must hurry to reach our cell, for fear that if we delay outside we shall lose our watchfulness.” Watchfulness was what the desert mothers and fathers focused on through unceasing prayer to increase their awareness of the sacred.

They were aware that the desire to walk away from their cell could be a powerful temptation. But as Amma Matrona wrote: “We carry ourselves wherever we go and cannot escape temptation through mere flight.” We carry our “stuff” – our issues, our struggles, our compulsions – with us wherever we are. While our impulse may be to flee to a new place when something is not working out for us, the desert wisdom is to stay and become present to ourselves just as we are.

Another dimension of the “cell” is the prison-industrial complex in the United States. There are many for whom the cell is not a place of voluntary retreat. Some who spend their days in prison cells learn meditation as a way to become internally free. This can also be a place of profound transformation, albeit in the midst of the horrors of having one’s external freedom seized.

Connected with the cell as symbol for the interior life is the cell as cultivation of patience. The Greek word for patience essentially means to stay with whatever is happening. This is similar to the central Benedictine concept of stability. On one level, stability calls monks to a lifetime commitment with a particular community. On a deeper level, the call is not to run away when things become challenging. Stability demands that we stay with difficult experiences and stay present to the discomfort they create in us.

The cell, it seems, is the complete antithesis of our rushed attention, of trying to get as much done as possible, all at the same time. When we are focusing on ways to accomplish too many things at once, we are never really present for anything.

Instead, in our cell, we are called to full presence to our inner life. We cultivate the inner witness and watch as our thoughts scurry between different states, notice our internal responses to things, and observe when our minds move to distraction as a way of avoiding engagement with life. The cell is the place where we grow in deep intimacy with our patterns and habits. When we become conscious of our methods of distraction, we can learn to always bring ourselves back to our experience. As a result of this attentiveness to our inner world, we can then bring this kind of loving gaze to our outer tasks.

To behold means to hold something in your gaze. To behold is not to stare or glance; it is not a quick scan or an expectant look. We can’t multitask and behold at the same time. Beholding has a slow and spacious quality to it. Your vision becomes softer as you make room to take in the whole of what you are seeing. There is a reflective and reverential quality to this kind of seeing. You release your expectations of what you think you will see and receive what is actually there, and in the process everything can shift. To behold is to meet the subject of your gaze with love.

Writer Cole Arthur Riley describes this kind of loving attentiveness to the world: “For me, most simply, contemplative spirituality is a fidelity to beholding the divine in all things. In the field, on the walk home, sitting under an oak tree that hugs my house. A sacred attention.” Riley goes on to describe wonder as the heart of this presence to the world and what holds her faith together. “We have found ourselves too busy for beauty. We spin our bodies into chaos with the habits and expectations of the dominating culture, giving and doing and working… We live depleted of that rest which is the only reliable gateway to wonder.” When we rush through life, we miss moments that spark wonder. When we miss wonder, life can start to feel shallow and without meaning or beauty.

In our gospel story, a woman comes to anoint Jesus with costly ointment. It is a lavish act. The disciples who witness this moment object to the waste this represents. They tell Jesus the jar of ointment should have been sold to feed the poor. But Jesus corrects them and praises the woman for what she has done.

Jesus is practicing full attention to the gift of the moment. He recognizes the grace the woman offers to him, and he honors her for it. He celebrates the extravagance. The disciples are critical of her perceived waste. Yet Jesus responds differently, not choosing to value rules and practicalities over generosity. Rather than being caught up in distraction, Jesus is present to the women and to her act of love toward him.

The desert mother Amma Syncletica wrote: “There are many who live in the mountains and behave as if they were in town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is a solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.”

It is not the physical cell that brings us peace. We might live in an urban center and imagine that if only we could escape to a monastery or a quiet place by the sea, then we would become present to our lives. But her wisdom reminds us that we can bring presence and focus into the midst of a crowd and we can also sit in a quiet place and be overwhelmed by thoughts and distractions.

The woman who anoints Jesus enters the busy room of the disciples having dinner, but she is fully present to just Jesus and her devotion to him. Jesus could have easily been distracted by the disciples’ complaints; instead, he remains fully focused on the woman and her love and faith. In spite of the busy surroundings, they are in the cell they have created, fully present, making space for a holy moment.

Lent is all about entering the cell. It invites us to fast from distraction and multitasking so that we might embrace the practice of attention and beholding, creating space to see things differently. In this open space you create, you may discover a hunger to behold life as it is.

A closing blessing:

Holy Presence, guide our gaze back to here and now.

And reveal to us that you are with us always.

Awaken us to see each shimmering moment,

each loving gesture, each face full of yearning,

and the ways you dance through creation.

Sustain us in releasing our need to distract ourselves

with things that do not nourish

or that numb us to the aliveness that is possible.

Help us to savor this world through the gift of our senses,

so that each day we look for beauty,

we listen to the music of the world,

we relish our meals,

we inhale the fragrance of flowers,

we feel the embrace of life.

When our attention wanders to that which depletes us,

gently direct us again to your sacred banquet. Amen.