June, 2020 – “Why does it always seem to take our world being turned upside down before we recognize ourselves in each other? . . . A thoughtful reflection written by a Lenten Challenge participant & HSHC supporter Ann M. Frensley.

The Lenten Challenge was timely for me and affirmed much in my spiritual journey of the past two years. While it is easier for me to avoid the difficult questions, to even deny the necessity of them, what I learned by staying with those questions during this season of Lent is significant. I prayed for deeper discernment and wanted to reflect with greater intention on the questions. I did not want to throw down rote responses.

What did my relationships look like? Did they feel authentic? Had I been authentic, i.e., honest, patient, present, vulnerable, forgiving? God knows I lack patience sometimes, especially with family. I thought I knew what to expect by asking for deeper discernment. Ha! After reading the daily reflections, I wrote them in my journal to revisit later. I was surprised by my responses as the prayer for depth began to open up to me. But I was uncomfortable. It had not always been easy to be honest with my thoughts and feelings, even to myself. I experienced life differently from others.

The Challenge offered an opportunity to be authentic, my true self before God, my family, and friends. It might be too much to ask from me. Could I allow myself to be vulnerable, answer honestly, even to myself? The ugly and uninvited, vicious and deadly coronavirus thrust itself into the midst of Lent, taunted and dared me to reexamine my relationships and my responses to the Lenten Challenge with more urgent intention. The cause and effect that the pandemic was having on so many lives was affecting me, my community, and the entire world. The event was expanding exponentially and holding humanity emotionally hostage. Why was this happening? How long will we have to be separated? Life will surely be different. But how? No answers. Doubts? Many. I missed my weekly interactions with people I had come to know and was aware of how much I had relied on facial expressions, gestures, and body language in conversations. Visual cues and tone of voice do not exist in emails and texts. Virtual face-to-face encounters are helpful and can brighten my day, but nothing compares with the actual presence of a loved one, a friend, a confidante. It has not been easy for me to accept the loss of physical presence, and I grieve it like a death. Whatever the pandemic serves up, I can still choose how to respond, but I’ve had a hard time with that.

The unexpected has burdened me with many questions. How can I communicate with others in a clearer and more conscious way? How can I create new ways to be present from a distance and celebrate meaningful moments of intimacy in my relationships, and for how long? What’s next? Why me? Why us? Why now? Can I manage to be kinder to myself? Maybe the seasons of Lent and Pandemic occurred together so I can appreciate how fragile and interconnected my relationships are. I must celebrate them now in as many imaginative and creative ways as possible. Why does it always seem to take our world being turned upside down before we recognize ourselves in each other?

Easter was celebrated differently this year, and I celebrate the Resurrection from a new perspective. I have another chance to renew my relationships, soften tough scars, forgive and be forgiven, reconcile with and be kinder to others and to myself. I continue to hold the questions with no answers in tension with hope and the expectation of clarity.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainier Maria Rilke wrote, “…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and… try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Ann M. Frensley April 2020