This Lenten season, I am not on Facebook. I deleted my Instagram app (though, I confess shamefacedly, not before making sure I could still access my account when I decide to get it back again). I kept twitter. Gotta keep twitter because it keeps you smart, though admittedly in the most lowbrow way possible.
Having stricken myself from social media, I should mention that I don't characterize this as "giving up Facebook for Lent." That isn't quite it. It's so prosaic. It's so paltry. Because it's really not a big deal. The icky part of me, who likes to imagine herself far cleverer than others, dislikes the meager ring to it, the hackneyed, college-girl piety. But I think this twisted feeling draws its source from another, quieter, and better voice.
In my best intentions, this is not exactly a fast - a fast is meant to push you to your limits physically, to teach your soul by way of your body that there are things you cannot ever do on your own. To say, "I gave up Facebook for Lent" seems to me a feeble fast.
Lent is traditionally viewed as a season of giving things up, of fasting and penitence. This is good. But Lent literally means "springtime." Lent is a unique giving up - a sacrifice of ourselves that is in reality a yes to more abundance. It's a turning, a journey, a path increasingly lined with life, a season that ends in Resurrection. In addition to our fasts, Lent is a time to examine our lives, our habits, and see where we are quenching life in ourselves. Where do our daily distractions keep us from fully seeing and breathing and living in the sharp real of God? These days, we say so many "yeses" -- yes to parties, yes to friends, yes to responsibility, yes to relationships, yes to anything you suggest that I can't refuse without feeling crap about myself. But so many yeses are just a way of saying no to the life inside me. Lent, more than anything, is a time to say no to our myriad habitual distractions -- not for the sake of the no, but for the sake of a better Yes.
Henri Nouwen says in The Life of the Beloved that the Christian life is "the change from living life as a painful test to prove that you deserve to be loved, to living it as an unceasing 'Yes' to the truth of that Belovedness.'"
Lent is a season of yes, a respite from all the other acquiescences that leave us harried, stressed, anxious, violated, afraid. Lent is a yes to the love of God, a yes to our need for him, a yes to becoming human.
T.S. Eliot describes the Christian life as "A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)" Rilke says you must change your life.
So I've asked myself, How can I make my life simpler? How can I create space for a better Yes? This is just a little baby step to changing my life.
Jesus says, "I have come that you may have life, and have it more abundantly."
