Lifestyle

Here’s another reflection from sabbatical: When something becomes a lifestyle, you don’t stop thinking that way when you’re not doing that thing.  It becomes the way you think in all things.  Here’s what I mean.  Back in a previous life, my crew and I used to paddle open boats (canoes, as opposed to “decked” boats like kayaks - or worse, rubber boats like rafts) on whitewater.  I was class III competent, class IV challenged.  In class III, especially in an open boat, you really should know what you’re doing; in class IV, you had better have some pretty serious skills.  A couple of things whitewater teaches you: 1. Your ego will get you hurt or worse.  You have to be completely honest with yourself about what you can handle and what you can’t.  If you can’t, then portage around the rapid and live to paddle another day.  (The rule was “If you can’t spit, don’t run it!”)  2. No matter what happens, never stop thinking, meaning don’t freeze up if you find yourself heading somewhere you’d rather not be.  Just use your skills and experience to maneuver into a better position and trust the people you’re paddling with.  Once that becomes the norm of your thought process, it generalizes even when you’re off the river.  I’m absolutely sure that’s what kept me out of a wreck when I was about to be sandwiched by two people coming in opposite directions with me between them.  I put my vehicle in the only one-inch margin of error there was between the two and we were all able to drive away unscathed.

That’s the way of it for a life of faith.  It’s like the Lenten disciplines that aren’t only for that short period of time between the end of Epiphany and the beginning of the Easter season.  Ideally, you shouldn’t focus on the Lenten disciplines - self-examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, self-denial; reading and meditating on God’s holy word - only during Lent, like “I’ll do Bible study (or not have martinis) for four weeks or so, but then I’m off the hook for the rest of the year.”  They should be the way of deepening your faith that lasts through the whole year so that whatever it is - deepening faith, compassion, self-giving, grace - becomes a lifestyle, the way you think and pray and act whether it’s Lent or not. 

We have quite a while before Lent begins again (March 5, 2025), but that gives us a lot of time for self-examination, i.e. to be completely honest with ourselves about the degree that faith plays in our actual day-to-day life in work, family, and community, and not just on Sundays.  And if we find ourselves heading somewhere we’d rather not be, rather than letting that taunting voice of doubt keep us frozen in a rut, we can use our skills and experience to maneuver into a better position (i.e. repentance) and trust the people with whom we are all paddling along when the class level gets challenging.  Then it becomes a matter of lifestyle, not just when we’re in church mode, but in all things.
 
- Marc Vance