Deliver me, Jesus

On Ash Wednesday, and Love

Blessed Ash Wednesday to you all.

This is the third year I’ll be observing Lent.

The first year, 2021, was just a few months after I had my vision of Jesus and was very early in this long strange conversion process. I was also deep in long covid illness and living with my Presbyterian aunt and uncle. We went to their church for Ash Wednesday service. Everyone was still social distancing so we were given a pamphlet with the service to work through on our own, in the car. Once we were done, we walked to the covered porch in masks and were given our ashes.

I had never before been so aware of the certainty of my own death, and when Pastor Keith put the ashes on my forehead, looked in my eyes and said,

“Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,”

I was overcome with emotion. I turned, took three steps and broke into tears. My aunt and uncle enfolded me in their arms and held me while I cried. I wasn’t sad, just overcome with everything that had happened and with something that felt, to my surprise, like joy.

Driving home I stared out the car window at the trees and one star, visible through the clouds. I could *feel* the aliveness in the trees, that star, in myself, in everything. The blood pumping through my veins, the sap running through the trees, the branches reaching up towards the sun. It was almost hallucinatory. It lasted an hour or so, and then faded away.

This year, I will be confirmed as a Roman Catholic at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. For Lent, I’m observing the Catholic fasting and abstinence (from meat) tradition, giving up smoking pot and watching TV late at night (the weed started out as a sleep aid but it’s slipped quietly into checking out for two hours before I go to sleep, in a way that doesn’t feel great), going to my parish on Tuesday nights for mass, soup supper and a group study of Laudato Si (Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment).

I am also using the app Hallow to participate in their Lenten meditation series. I just finished the first day and had some thoughts I thought I’d share here.

The series is following the 15th century text The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. Today we prayed a ‘Litany of Humility’ which was, I think, made up by the folks from the app? Maybe it’s from the book, I’m not sure. Here it is (from the Ascension website):

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…

Woof! Tough stuff. It felt really good to pray most of it, but I got hung up on

‘from the desire of being loved, Deliver me Jesus.’

Don’t we all want to be loved? Don’t we all NEED to be loved? Isn’t the lack of feeling loved and supported basically what is wrong in the world?

Yes. It is. And trying to get that love, that feeling of being absolutely cherished, beloved, of belonging to something, that unconditional acceptance, isn’t really something I believe we can get from each other. We can, and I believe should, attempt to GIVE that to each other, but we will fail. With the exception, maybe (hopefully), of a parent/child relationship, unconditional love and acceptance is really a lot to ask from other human beings. Even parents usually fail at it.

But we do need it! And I believe we have it, all the time. From God, Holy Mother, the Universe, Nature, whatever you want to call that Force of Love that created and animates us all. It’s always there. But we forget. And then we try to get it from each other. And then we fail. And then we are devastated. And then we often go out and cause harm from our devastation.

After we prayed the above Litany there was space given to notice any part that stuck out, that bothered or hurt or even uplifted you, and then to talk to God about it. I asked for clarity and after a few moments could see that the problem here isn’t in needing Love, it is in DESIRING it, and desiring it from others, specifically. What if we already knew how beloved we were, deep in our guts and bones and DNA, and then focused ourselves on SHARING that love with others, rather than trying to GET that love FROM other people? What a shift in energy and behavior that would be for so many of us. And what if ALL of us were doing that, all the time?

I think for many of us, or at least for myself, praying to shift our focus away from desiring love sounds like giving up love. It is not. It is actually praying to be able to feel and experience how very loved we are, all the time.

Maybe we should change it:

From the desire of being loved,
Deliver me Jesus

From the false belief that I am ever NOT loved,
Deliver me Jesus.

Blessings and remembrance of your inherent Belovedness to you all.