The Way Forward

The Way Forward: Desiring Less for Lent

This week, we hear from one of the regular writers you'll find here at The Ecological Disciple—Rev. Sarah Robinson. Pastor Sarah loves living and pastoring in the eclectic Ecodistrict Audubon Park in Orlando, FL. Her passions include sustainability, gardening, and the arts, as well as addressing issues of hunger and human rights. In this piece, Sarah shares some practices for Lent that can help readers desire less as they look to follow the footsteps of Jesus. You can read Sarah's earlier post for The Ecological Disciple on moving from abstract learner to learner-practitioner here on her author's page.

I was such a failure. Week after week I would confess: “that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone." It was that “left undone” part that haunted me. So much left undone. Never mind all the clear ways I have sinned in thought, word and deed by what I have done!

And then one day, as I wrestled, God gave me a new framing thought: “How can I be life-giving to myself and the people around me today?” This reframing began my sanctification journey from a consumer mindset to a Kin-dom of God mindset. It has helped me reorder and reorient my desires.

The work of desiring less, not just trying to consume or purchase less, but actually desiring less in the first place, is a spiritual practice that takes deep reflective work. But how do we get from here to there?

One of my favorite musicals, Hadestown, contains this powerful line: “If no one takes too much, there will always be enough.” Hadestown writer and composer, Anaïs Mitchell puts these words in the mouth of one of the central characters, Orpheus. Though the story is ultimately a tragedy, “There’s beauty in the struggle for a better world even if we can’t yet see the result,” Mitchell explains. “Orpheus is a hero not because he succeeds—but because he tries!” And similarly, we are not called to reach perfection in this lifetime, but to try, each day, to be more life-giving.

I am so grateful in my life and faith journey for the practice of Lent. It is a time set aside in the church year where we adopt a practice of letting go of things that may not be serving us in order to have space for more life-giving practices.

So, what might Lent hold for you if you are invited to desire less? There are habits and practices that help shape us and our desires and, if we adopt these practices during Lent, some of those changes may become permanent as we come out on the other side the season.

Some practices I find valuable are:

The Practice of Gratitude, which allows us to recognize what we already have.
The Practice of Noticing, which wakes our senses and our spirit to what is really happening around and within us.
The Practice of the “Rs” of Creation Care
      1. Refuse items we don’t need. I try to refuse one-time-use plastics wherever possible.
     2. Reduce items that you purchase, especially items that you purchase new. I love buying clothes at thredup.com, where every item is second hand. I also have moved almost entirely to zero waste options for my personal care and cleaning items. Check if you have a local zero waste store!
     3. Reuse something you already have. I love saving plant pots and finding interesting ways to reuse them for future projects.
     4. Repair something that broke, and if you don’t know how, see if there is someone in your community who can help you. I am super grateful that my mother is an excellent seamstress and regularly helps me repair my ripped clothes.
     5. Repurpose/Rot. Remember those flowerpots from above? Sometimes they make their way into other projects, especially art projects. And composting (a rotting process) is the ultimate repurposing- turning food and other organic material waste into new, rich soil to feed the next generation of plants.
     6. Recycle. This is a last resort; it’s why it comes last. It is much more difficult and expensive than all the other Rs. But it is an important part of the picture. When I started at Audubon Park Church, the church didn’t even have a municipal recycling bin. So, we got one, and just like that, removed large amounts of waste going to the landfill.

To live more intentionally using these practices, start small; notice how you feel. Pay attention to where the desire for a particular item, or the desire for more in general comes from. Check in with yourself—do I really need this item? Can I do without? What is the deeper desire that is behind this want for more?

Desire in and of itself is not a bad or sinful thing. It is natural, an inherent part of being human. But it is powerful, so just like anything else powerful, it must be handled with care and intention. How our desire is ordered, understood, and shaped by our intention matters.

The desire for safety, food, loving relationships, joy, meaning, comfort even—is good, natural—I would even go so far as to say created by God. But it is all too easy to have those desires distorted. Especially when the cultural waters tell us we need more and more of everything. The work of capitalism is to form us into consumers who are never satisfied. But the work of true “agape” Godly love helps us become more whole, more wholly human, and more wholly a child of God and loving participant in the work of the Kin-dom of God.

A formative question asked by psychiatrist and Christian Kurt Thompson on the podcast “No Small Endeavor” titled "The Work Beneath Lasting Love," struck me: "In the pursuit of what I want, what kind of person am I becoming?" If we allow God in Christ to be the model for this question, we have an opportunity to reorient and reorder our desires.

In Lent, we follow Jesus into the desert, a metaphor for our journey of disconnecting from things we depend on in order to depend on God. This wilderness journey for Jesus concludes with three temptations: the desire of physical needs, desire for limitless life without consequence, and the desire for power.

French anthropologist René Girard believed that what we desire is not innate but discovered outside ourselves by imitating others. Girard says, “What Jesus invites us to imitate is his own desire, the spirit that directs him toward the goal on which his intention is fixed: to resemble God the Father as much as possible.”

This Lent, I pray you will follow in the footsteps of Jesus as you learn to desire less, and to desire differently, until the whole world is made new and right, and the Kin-dom of God is fully present on earth.

Pastor Sarah