Weekly Clergy Letter from Mother Anne Turner
Dear Friends in Christ,
Our altar has become a parable for me during this season of Lent.
You have probably noticed that we don’t have flowers on the altar in Lent. You may have noticed that we don’t have a lot of candles, either—only two instead of the usual eight.
What is less obvious, from the pew, is just how much space this leaves on the altar. On a normal Sunday, altar guild and acolytes need to be careful in how they place the altar book, making sure to leave enough space to navigate around the cup and plate (known as chalice and paten). If it’s a feast day with extra clergy at the altar, we need to dodge one another’s hymnals and bulletins.
But in Lent? It’s all gone. When I preside at the eucharist during Lent, the altar is a quiet place. I stand with this congregation before God surrounded by an empty, white expanse.
I believe that this emptiness teaches me—teaches us—something about the spaciousness of Lent and its gift to our souls.
We tend to believe that our spiritual life is built by addition. Even in this season—especially in this season—we attempt to draw closer to God by doing more. Lenten disciplines offer a satisfyingly quantifiable piety. Lent is a time for strivers.
But even the most striving among us ultimately meets the limits of our efforts. We fail to meet the obligations we set for ourselves, and we fail to live up to the hopes we had for ourselves. If you have not yet hit this point in Lent, three weeks in, I suspect you soon will.
We meet our own limitations In front of the empty altar. No flowers, no adornment. Just the space made by absence. And yet it is this space that allows air and breath. It gives God’s grace elbow room to work. We grow much more surely from that spaciousness than we do from pressure.
My invitation to you this week is to accept your limitations. See what freedom that acceptance brings. When you have nothing to bring to God, what becomes possible?
Yours in Christ,
Anne+