First
Reflection
This
is what the season of Lent is about, about being born again, about
following the path of death and resurrection, about participating
in Jesus' final journey. To
become somewhat more concrete, some of us may need to die to specific
things in our lives--perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive
or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or
gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our
life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation,
or even to a deadness in our lives (you can die to deadness.)
It is possible to leave the land of the dead. So, the journey
of Lent is about being born again--about dying and rising, about
mortality and transformation.
On Ash Wednesday, we Christians are traditionally reminded of our
own mortality in a very vivid way, as the ashes are marked on our
foreheads in the sign of the cross. In the sign of the cross we
hear the words spoken over us, "Dust thou art and to dust thou
wilt return." This is a reminder not just of our physical mortality,
but of the very path of Lent itself. We begin this season of Lent
not only reminded of our death but marked for death, and that path
of death is about our transformation.
The
journey of Lent is about being born again by participating in the
death and
resurrection of Jesus, about that journey from Galilee to Jerusalem.
The journey of
Lent with its climax in Good Friday and Easter, is about embarking
on the way of
Jesus on that path of mortality and transformation that is at the
very center of the
Christian life. When you think of it, who of us does not yearn for
this? Who of us does not yearn for a fuller connection to life?
Who does not yearn for an identity
that releases us from anxiety and self-preoccupation? To
be born again, it seems to me, corresponds to our deepest yearning.
May we this Lent experience that internal transformation that is
at the center of the Christian life. May we experience being born
again.
--from "Born Again" by Dr. Marcus Borg
Read
"Born Again" in its entirety.
Copyright ©2002 Dr. Marcus J. Borg
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