Every year, Lent seems to catch me by surprise. I try to stay on top of my calendar, but somehow this season seems to come more quickly all the time -- even when it comes late, as it does this year.

What's Lent all about? I like to think of it as a "spring-cleaning" kind of time, but that image is not so helpful today. I don't know many people who do full-scale spring cleaning any more. Certainly we don't in this household! Spring cleaning as a major event seems to be gone. Nonetheless, the image may be helpful -- a time to take stock of what has accumulated in one's life, fixing what can be fixed, throwing out (recycling?) what can no longer be used, and cleaning out the dusty corners.

I came to Brandon with no agenda -- just the sense that I had finished my ministry in Spruce Grove AB (where I had been for 13 years), and that a new ministry awaited me here. After three years here, I have a sense of what needs to be done, and I find myself really wondering if I am the person to do it. I have become for some parishioners the bearer of bad news, the person who moved in and started shifting furniture. It's clear to me that the parish needs some serious spring-cleaning, but it's not clear that very many share that perception.

So this Lent finds me with a lot of challenges on my plate, after a time of serious listening to people. I feel the need to keep challenging my congregation, but I also feel the need for new spiritual energy for myself.

What can be done?

One thought that keeps popping up is to take a lead from the environmental movement:
    Reduce: take more time for myself, paying attention to my own needs.
    Reuse: look back to the basics, and what has fed me in the past.
    Recycle: I don't ever repeat whole sermons or teaching series, but their central ideas don't grow old in the same way.

Above all, I know I must devote more time to prayer.

Lord, teach me to pray.
Lord, teach me to hear you more clearly.
Lord, help me to discern your call more surely.