Getting Wild: More Thoughts on Lent

Getting Wild

More thoughts on Lent by Jennifer Olin-Hitt

"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him "WILD THING!" and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" So he was sent to bed without eating anything. That night in Max's room a forest grew..."

Long before Spike Jonze made his film, I read this Maurice Sendak classic to my little boy, Sam. Someone had given us a paperback copy along with an orange-haired Wild Thing hand puppet. My son -- a toddler at the time -- loved the story. We both knew it by heart. He would sit on my lap, his chubby hand would turn the page, and we would crow the words in unison.

"Max said, "BE STILL!'"

..."' And now,' cried Max, 'Let the wild rumpus start!'"

Sometimes the hand puppet would also sit on my lap during the reading. Sam was ambivalent. On the one hand, he was thrilled that the creature from the pages was touchable with yarn-strung hair. But when I manipulated the doll, Sam shuddered and buried his face in my shoulder. Wildness was a magnet of attraction and repulsion.

I was cleaning out some bookshelves this week looking for a book to help me with a Lenten sermon. In the process I ran across Sendak's book. It is very sticky and fingered by now. It's been through many, many lap readings with Sam's little sister and some young nieces and nephews. The puppet must be in a box somewhere, the hostage of our last move.

In the last decade I've been pretty ambivalent myself about wild things. A couple of deaths in the family, some medical crises, financial stress, decisions about career, call, goals -- any of us in early middle age feel the eruption of wild questions and pulls. I have enough life experience to settle for the smoothing over of life with routine. I know how to get by, to maintain. But just at the edges of the calm a wild rumpus continues to rumble -- the angers left unexamined, desires for unexplored seas long stifled. I don't look at the wild things. I think they will go away if I ignore them. But they want my attention.

Max is still my hero. After all, he confronted those wilds things. "He tamed them with the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once and they were frightened and called him the most wild thing of all." Max is not afraid. He is not afraid that the wild things will overpower him. He musters a strength from the core of his little boy self. And all the while he is confident that his home is still waiting. No matter how far into the wild he travels, supper will still be in his room, ready and hot.

During Lent I pay close attention to the wild things in Jesus' life -- voices that taunt and tease, that tempt him to settle for calm seas. But like Max, Jesus courageously faces the wild things -- in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross. He enters the wild zone because his confidence in Home is profound. It is there that Jesus, Max, me find nourishment, welcome, forgiveness, safety.

Thoughts on Lent

One cold February day about fifteen years ago, I was preparing for my first Ash Wednesday as a pastor.  I had scrounged up some palms from last year's Palm Sunday, and I looked for a place to burn them.  The garage would do.  It was a dilapidated garage attached to the 1920s parsonage with slanted roof and exposed lathe boards.  Out of the chill.  Open door to prevent smoke inhalation.  In the middle of the concrete floor, I stood over a ceramic bowl large enough to catch the ashes that would fall.  The match struck with the acrid smell of sulfur.  Flame to dry palms.  Dry palms ignited.  Quickly burned.  So quick I risked a burn to my hand.  Ashes fell into the bowl, but not before a gust of wind ripped the side door open even further and the spring was taut enough to threaten breakage.  The wind was so strong it toppled a rake that was precariously leaning against the wall.  The rake fell on the bowl.  The bowl overturned and the ashes were gone -- silt on the floor, chafe in the wind.  I gleaned enough for the worship service, but many ashes were lost.

I am preparing for another Ash Wednesday.  In the short time I have been the pastor of Green Valley UM Church, I have seen some doors blown wide open.  Oncology reports.  Long distance calls from places of remote pain.  The ashes fly.  Some days I can hardly collect the pieces of my own life let alone the fragments of a flock.  But next Wednesday we will gather.  On Ash Wednesday we will gather because we believe that the wind which disrupts is also the wind of the Spirit of Life.  We need the ashes on our forehead -- a visible reminder to ourselves that the only bit of security we have is the God of Jesus Christ who collects and gathers our scattered lives.