An Invitation to Go Within

There is a great hunger out there in the world, and in our own hearts, to find a better way of living individually and collectively. We long for a new way forwards and to my mind it’s clear that the new way forwards needs a strong spiritual foundation. If we tend to the underlying soil of our lives we will all flower more beautifully in the world. This article is about using Lent as a time to till the soil of our lives.

Lent is the time in the Christian calendar that commemorates the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert in preparation for his crucifixion. Everything about Jesus’ life is symbolic and so just as Jesus withdrew to the desert, we are invited to withdraw from the cut and thrust of everyday life and to go within. Lent offers the structure of 40 days to carve out a sacred time in our year to tend to our spiritual lives.

Lent is an opportunity to slow it all down and to become more mindfully aware of the sacredness of life. It’s an opportunity to try and live with more meaning, to access a deeper sense of purpose in our lives, and to go deeper in our relationship with the Divine. Looked at in this way, Lent is characterised by wonder and curiosity.

The essence of curiosity is an acknowledgment of all that we do not know and maybe can never know. It’s an acknowledgement of the essential mystery of life. Lent offers the opportunity to sit in open ended wonder at this mystery, to carve out time in our day to sit still, to meditate or simply to be with life in as peaceful a manner as we can manage.

This type of curiosity isn’t greedy for answers. It is curiosity for its own sake and wonder for its own sake. It’s to be on the journey for the sake of being on the journey — with no attachment to a particular destination or outcome. It’s a surrender to the mystery of life that may reveal something of itself in return for the reverence of our enquiry.

Lent can be exercise in simplicity: I wonder where I might be guided to go in my inner journey, in my inner seeking, in my inner searching over the next 40 days? Wonder for the sake of wonder is the purest form of enquiry. Wonder that has no object is true wonder. I wonder …. and then I wait for what might be revealed.

This is what I am inviting you to explore and to experiment with in your own lives during Lent — not just in meditation but in your everyday lives too. To allow yourself to wonder about things in an open-ended way. So, when something happens, instead of being triggered into an emotional state, or reacting, or jumping to conclusions or to judgment — to let ourselves ask: I wonder what I don’t know about this situation, I wonder what is going on that I don’t know about, that I can’t know about and maybe can never know about?  This is how we practice sitting in unknowing.

So, this is how I am approaching Lent this year. I’m marking it out as 40 days of sacred enquiry conducted without putting any pressure on myself or anyone else to do it in a particular way, to come up with particular answers, or to come out the far end transformed utterly!  That may well happen but I’m letting go of all expectations, all plans, all desires and I’m simply going to engage in the art of open-ended wonder and curiosity about the sacred mystery of life and I invite you into that enquiry with me.