Pop 89: Giving Over, Giving Up & Giving Away
By Madonna Hamel
madonnahamel@hotmail.com
Here we are again, poised at the edge of the desert, about to enter forty days in the wilderness of our spiritual lives. Or not. Many of us won’t be living an ascetic Lent after an ecstatic of Mardi Gras, nor belonged to a faith where we engage in a practice I like to call: “Giving over, Giving up, Giving away.” Easter, for the secular world, is about chocolate eggs and snuggly bunnies and time off work and school. For some, it is a chance to party on the beach or at the ski hill.
I’m filled with fond childhood memories of chocolate bunnies in Easter baskets. I’m aware that the egg and the bunny stories have essential roots in ancient Earth-based practices that celebrated the coming out of a wintry slumber, planting seeds and giving birth. I was also raised to observe Easter as the culminating moment in the Christian tradition, the most important of its spiritual seasons.
Born on Good Friday, I hold a special place for Easter in my heart. That doesn’t mean I haven’t struggled with the various ways it has been presented to and foisted upon me and my siblings and fellow schoolmates. However, for the most part, Easter has always been a time of Awe and Mystery to me partly because, growing up, meteorologically-speaking, Good Friday never failed to deliver storms of biblical proportions. And once even an earthquake.
On the Friday I was born, our town of Dawson Creek flooded. My father filmed my mom on the steps of the hospital with me wrapped in a pink baby blanket while the water rose and a garbage can floated in and out of view. And there was a story in my family that my grandmother saw a red cross in the sky on the Good Friday of 1945, and a month later, WWII ended. As Catholics, we relished Good Friday narratives involving shocks, revelations and conversions as much as we thrilled at stories of angels or Mary visitations.
But I’ve come to believe that Good Friday would never have the kind of impact it has if it didn’t have that 40-day lead-up, beginning with Ash Wednesday. Miracles happen to predisposed minds in the same way genius gets realized by trained and prepared minds. Lent prepares us.
When I say “come to believe,” I am talking about a life full of comings and goings. I had to leave the church in order to get a fresh perspective. I embarked on my own independent studies of world religions and spiritual practices. I practiced mediation and yoga, fell in love with Buddhism and Hinduism, went to sweat lodges, offered tobacco and smudged, and continue to incorporate most of those practices. I don’t believe in One True Religion. I believe in One Common Humanity.
My departure from church was not unique. Most of the folks I know from Catholic school days have not maintained their faith. Their reasons are myriad. Perhaps they never felt cherished. Maybe belonging to an elite club seemed hypocritical, counter to their soul’s cries and the cries of others. For them, religion demanded an unquestioning and fearful (not awe-inspiring) obedience to a punishing God who resembled a prison guard with a cattle prod, more than a loving and life-enhancing Presence.
I left the church. But I missed the poetry. And the discipline. And the shared witnessing that came with the rituals and the sacraments that marked life’s passages. So I started reading the Mystics, seeking a language to describe my experience of the sacred “Isness” of everything in the world, to quote the 13th Century German mystic Meister Eckhart, whose writing I came across in The Covent Inn’s sitting room.
In 2014 I fled the world of distractions and diversions and entered the convent. The Convent Inn, that is. I was given a quiet, peaceful room in the Val Marie b&b to write and explore my burgeoning love of the desert mothers and fathers. I loftily decided I would make the inn my monastery. And the surrounding territory of Southwest Saskatchewan, including Grasslands National Park, would become my desert.
The desert mothers and fathers were monks and nuns who lived in the Egyptian desert during the fourth and fifth centuries. They fled to the desert to escape the tempting conformity of the world. “Flee, be silent and pray,” came a voice from the heavens, according to one of the first fathers. “Pray, Fast and Give Alms,” say the present-day mothers and fathers when asked how to approach Lent.
To me, prayer is how I connect with something bigger than me and this all-consuming material world. I “give over” to a voice of spirit that is both beyond me and yet deep within. And I listen for answers by sitting in silence.
Fasting is not only about “giving up” coffee or chocolate, although those are enormous sacrifices for someone who realizes, in doing so, that she is hooked. Fasting is also “giving up” gossip, worry, rushing, multi-tasking, unnecessary shopping, mindless snacking, time-sucking video-watching etc. “Giving up” is connected to “giving over” because, once I cease my frenetic activities, the subtle and pertinent voice of spirit can begin to be heard.
“Giving away” is what I do with the stuff I give up. For every nasty reort I give up, I give away a kind word. Instead of giving my unasked opinion, I can give praise in the form of a compliment regarding a job well done or a quality much appreciated. For every coffee I don’t drink, I can plop a coin in a collection box or light a votive candle. And every hour not spent in watching youtube I can give to volunteer work in my village.
We are made from dust, and we’re all gonna end up as dust; that’s what the Lenten ashes on the forehead are all about. Ash Wednesday’s central ritual is, for many of us, a memento mori, a reminder of death. Lent gives us a chance to give up the dead weight of a busy, distracted life to prepare us to give ourselves a fresh start, come Easter.