Compassion Sees, First Sunday in Lent
Rev. Kathryn Ransdell
Feb. 26, 2012
The Year was 1998. The company: Faber-Castell, maker of pens and pencils. The respondents: 1,000 adults via telephone. The survey: Do you doodle?
· The results: 75% of respondents do doodle.
· One out of four people do doodle at least once a day.
· Women are more likely to doodle than men.
· Of the men who do doodle, 44% said they usually doodle straight-line designs (squares, triangles or rectangles).
· 45% of the women who do doodle, said they doodled circles or curved shapes.
· 18-24-year-olds are by far the most prolific doodlers. 92% of the group doodled.
· From 25 to 65, doodling drops at a significant rate.
· 63% doodle while on the phone.
· 55% doodle while trying to solve a problem.
· 50% doodle while on the phone at work.
· 45% doodle during meetings or classes.
· The reason that 60% gave for why they doodle: boredom.
· 43% doodled to help relax and reduce stress.
and guess what, according to a handwriting analyst, the shapes, slants and size of doodles, as well as the location on the page, the writing instrument used, the amount of pressure applied, the prevalence of shading or different colors are all indicators of your sanity.
We just don't know what those things are indicating. So if you are a bit cuckoo, your doodles won't give it away.
We are going to doodle our way through Lent. The word "Lent" is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning "to lengthen" and refers to a season when the days become longer, i.e., spring. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that the number forty was "evidently suggested by the forty days' fasts of Moses, Elijah, and especially our Lord himself."Since the fourth century A.D. the Church has generally observed Lent as a time of fasting, of inner examination, of abstaining from festivities, of alms-giving, and of more strict attendance at worship
I got the idea to doodle through Lent as I've had a revival of my spiritual practice of coloring mandalas with crayons. It was something I was introduced to about 6 years ago, kinda forgot about it, then remembered it two weeks ago with my compassion book club. Our mystagogue Tim Scorer doodles and he is fascinated with the one-line, five-pointed star. That star will guide us through our Lent.
When you are working on deep things, internally and externally, doodling is a way of riding the waves of emotion and yet continuing to dig deep.
And that's really what Lent is all about...riding the waves of life while digging deep thanks to your spiritual practice of denying yourself something you want, or, taking on something you need.
Lent is really a gift. Perhaps it's way too cliche, but really, challenging yourself to change a basic pattern in your everyday living and observing the results of what comes from that change is part of the joy of being human.
On this first Sunday in Lent, the first point of our doodling 5-pointed star is this: Compassion Sees.
What do you see right now? (physical description)
Close your eyes, allow them to relax, then open them and let your eyes drift to a softer gaze...What do you see now?
Close your eyes, allow them to relax, then open them once again and let your eyes drift into an even softer gaze...what do you see?
This brief meditation allows us to see beyond the physical, what we think we know, and enter into a space of what we might now know, and yet we can begin to hold compassion for what we see with that soft gaze.
And so it is with our own life, when we turn that meditation inside, and we see first with the eyes of the heart...then we soften that gaze...and we look inside again with the eyes of the heart...and then we soften that inward gaze once again and we look at that which is in our life and our soul, and we no longer pass judgement, criticize or blame, we simply hold it in love and compassion.
· Seeing only with our physical eyes is survival.
· Seeing with the eyes of our heart, with a softer gaze, is life abundant.
The inward journey that it takes, to get from one to another, is not an easy road.
Today's Scriptures have two opposite visuals:
1. A rainbow.
2. A wilderness.
perhaps the first is mythological. The latter is historical and geographical and yet, metaphorical for each one of us because we've been in the wilderness of life.
What do we need for this inward journey, seeing with the eyes of the heart, softening our gaze? We need the rainbow...and the promise that God made through it...I will be your God. There is nothing, no nothing, no nothing that will ever change that covenant.
We will have to pack this rainbow in our hearts because when you journey into the wilderness, it gets rocky. Don't think flat desert sands for this wilderness where Jesus spent 40 days battling Satan.
Think rocks.
A legend that prevails throughout the Near East says that when Titan was transporting the material of the world and was carrying the rocks to spread them all over the world equally, his sack broke and the whole mass tumbled out, and that this plateau which I am now describing is the result.
Descriptions of the land from the web:
· "The eastern slope forms the terrible " wilderness " of Judea. From Bethany (about 4 miles from Jerusalem) eastward, the land becomes dry and rocky, where the sun scorches in the summer and the rains pour in the winter, and the vegetation is scarce. Here Jesus in the forty days of the Temptation was " among the wild beasts.""
· "From the eastern edge this wilderness plunges down into the Jordan valley. The pinnacled summit of one noticeable cliff is thought of as the Place of Temptation, from which Jesus could look out across the Jordan Valley toward the eastern lands, and range north and south toward Syria and Egypt, thus, by suggestion, having in His mind the "kingdoms of the world," although I think Satan offered a bigger picture."
· "It is a noticeable fact in history that the desert life is not far from Jerusalem. The wandering desert Arab has brought his flocks over these hills and thus carried the primitive nomad life continuously almost to the very gates of Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, the prophets who have lived at the royal court in Jerusalem found, within a short walk of the great city, the solitude and the silence, the mass of eternal stars overhead, and the awe of the sense of the Presence of God’s vastness."
· "The city of God was radically shaped by it's geography. Jerusalem sat atop the central ridge of the Western Mountains. The mountains around God's city were known as the Central Mountains, or Highlands. In the immediate area were the Judean Mountains. The Central Ridge Route ran through Jerusalem, and connected in with Shechem to the north, and Beersheba to the south. Ancient Jerusalem was literally shaped by these mountains and valleys. The city was protected by steep ravines in the south and east. To the east the terrain drastically plummeted nearly 3,500 feet from the Mount of Olives to Jericho below, in the Jordan Valley. In the west the change was less drastic, as the hills descended to the coastal plain and the Mediterranean Sea. Abraham not only dwelt in the Central Highlands, but primarily in the Negev, the desert region in the south. To the immediate southeast of Jerusalem was the Judean Wilderness, which merged with the Negev south of Hebron. It was in this vast wilderness Jesus was tempted by the Devil."
The visuals of this first Sunday in Lent speak for themselves: a rainbow, and a rocky wilderness. you don't need me to draw out the metaphor for you in a classic 3-point sermon. Instead, I will share with you a story of a dear friend who died a year ago from a long battle with cancer. She was way too young, 50s. And the story of her life is amazing...
She painted like this most of her life, but for the longest time, never called herself an artist. She could doodle, sketch, but an artist...how she could not see that she was an artist.
On the outside, she looked perfect, like a life of rainbows. Then one day, life drug her into a wilderness. And the journey she had to take, inward, and deep, with the eyes of the heart....I invite you to see her Lenten story....
A year ago January, when it became clear that Karen's body could no longer battle the cancer, I contacted her just to tell her thanks. It's hard to find artists in the world who welcome you into their world and art.
When I contacted Karen, because they both have in common being the girl in a girl-boy twinset, I knew that I wanted a copy of her book to be included in a treasure box that I make for each child. Little things from the journey that I'm saving for them. I asked Karen if she would send a book to Anna as a way to hold part of my friend here on earth even after she was gone.
Karen sent this book to Anna, with this enclosed note, three months before she died.
· He reminded me that there are those who need help in this world--we need to open our eyes and embrace that role. The title, "Can you See me?" refers to Gene and other children who often need a friend of courage. This book was created to help heal the little children."
Compassion sees with the eyes of the heart, with a soft gaze...
(I will tell the congregation one of the last things Karen saw....her vision of the boxes and of the village and the art and ultimately the canoe...and that when it came to the shore and the village elders walked her there, in the canoe, was her brother.)
When we take-on the Lenten journey, not because we have to, but because we want to go deeper in ourselves, or why else be human?--
Compassion sees hope in the midst of despair;
Compassion sees healing in the middle of brokenness;
Compassion sees something found when it looks lost
Compassion sees forgiveness when guilt hovers
Compassion sees peace in the face of fear
Compassion sees acceptance in the pain of rejection
May we be gentle with ourselves--and one another--as gentle as God is gentle with us as we lengthen into Lent, go deeper within ourselves, until that resurrection dawn.
Or, as Karen wrote:
"For when we find that pulsating strength
of the spirit, the gift from
the greatest of Givers -- we begin!
We rise,
trembling with bold purpose,
vulnerable to all that is offered,
Looking directly...into the eyes of life."
