A Lenten Reflection by Catharine Reid

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Growing up in my family, Lent didn’t mean much more than “giving some thing up.” The ritual of withholding from myself it this way hasn’t seemed to move me closer to God.

Instead, during Lent I am playing with my “bodyspirit”. I am moving and thinking with a renewed curiosity about how my body and my spirit experience the physical world. I am breathing more deeply. I am noticing the fragrance of the wet earth beneath my boots as I walk through my neighborhood. I am hearing the chirps, barks, shouts, tires driving through puddles, school buses going by and the metal against metal scrap of my mailbox being closed. I am trying to eat more slowly. I am tasting the differences between sour, salt and sweet and hot and cold in my mouth. I’m breathing more deeply. I set my alarm to get up to see the “blood worm moon”. I am spontaneously laughing with my new friend. She does something unexpected and silly and it cracks me up. I am holding hands more often these days. When I do, I feel the tender warmth of a grasp as a hand folds around mine.

I am having a renewed thought, without these experiences of my body I would not have a conduit to spirit. By approaching the ordinary sensations of the body with curiosity and awe, I am having the distinct pleasure of a spiritual experience. As small as many of these sensations are, when I approach them with concentration and attention they allow me a glimpse into a greater reality, a bigger reality.

By being attuned to my “bodyspirit,” my ordinary life has become extraordinarily alive. I feel like I am in the “flow.” Is this an experience of the sacred? I think it is. Is it preparation for Easter? I think it is. Maybe by practicing more mindfulness- giving up living on autopilot- I actually have giving up something.