A Lenten Reflection by Katie Koranda

March 9, 2022

I saw a Tweet that said, “For Lent, I’m giving up.”

I think there is supposed to be a bit of dark humor to it as we enter the third year of a pandemic that didn’t have to be this way, continued systemic racism, yet another war, and countless other tragedies.

But I wonder if our Tweet-er is onto something. You see, I don’t know much about Lent, technically. But I do know that we’re supposed to give something up. And since 2020, I have seen article after tweet after article about how maybe this is the Lent for joy. After all, we’ve given up so much already.

But what if we just give up altogether? Hear me out.

I don’t mean this to sound like despair. But isn’t giving up another way of saying “letting go?”

This Lent, I’m letting go.

Of expectations.

I want to be open to what Life has for me.

Of waiting.

I want to live fully in each moment.

Of hope.

I want to instead embrace peace, joy, resistance, justice.

As Mary Oliver said in her poem In Blackwater Woods, “To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”