Dear Friends,

This is Rev. Patricia, and I’m happy to be writing this “In the Interim” letter to you. I have been feeling the approach of the holy season of Lent. It feels like swimming in a warm ocean and seeing and feeling a large swell coming, about to lift us up into buoyancy.

Its approach is like warm summer winds that blow across fields. The winds are invisible, yet we can feel them, and they can be seen in the quaking rustle and roll of milkweeds, cornstalks, mustards, and tufted grasses. They seem to bow their heads in a glad dance. The sight always stirs something in me – a longing, an inexplicable sense of peace, subtle joy, spaciousness.

Maybe you have felt that, too. The feeling that comes from rising in ocean waves and waves of wind are somehow intimately familiar. They touch down in the core of us, like our dance with the Holy Spirit.

The outer forms of Lent – scriptures, services, practices, and programs – are gifts. They offer what could be named as bridges, channels, or guide rails because they guide us into the invisible graces of Lent. These “bridges” offer us an opportunity to recognize, notice, and engage in the graces of Lent. We can ground ourselves and our lives deeply in them. We need this so much in these hard times.

I want to offer two beautiful resources for Lent that you can use at home, in the rhythms of your own life.

But first, I also hope you will take a moment to look at all that is being offered in Lent at St. Paul’s: the services, prayer opportunities, the Forums, the Lent Evening Series. All the details you need about these can be found on our website, in our weekly E-News, in Parish Notes, and in Sunday Notes. I hope you will find ways to drink from the font of these graces that this season – that God – so abundantly offers us.

The first resource for at-home use is from Kate Bowler, professor of Religious History at Duke University, and a New York Times best-selling author. You can find four different resources for Lent on her website, katebowler.com.

The first one is a series of guides called The Hardest Part, described in this way:

Life is this strange, tender mix, isn’t it? Joy and sorrow, love and loss, heartbreak and hope, all tangled together. This year, we invite you to embrace Lent as it is—raw, honest, and tender. This is the season that asks us to stop pretending we’re holding it all together. It’s a time to pause, sit with what’s fragile and unfinished, and let God meet us in the hardest parts of our lives.

Bowler’s three other guides are:

• Have a Beautiful Terrible Lent: Resources to Reflect and Pray in Lent
• Bless the Lent We Actually Have: 40 Days to Reflect, Pray and Bless Our Imperfect Lives
• A Good Enough Lent: A 40-Day Companion to Read, Reflect and Pray

The second resource I want to offer is a book from the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Diocese of Washington, DC. Written in 2023, it is called, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith. She certainly seems qualified to have penned such a book.

As most of you know, Bishop Budde became well-known to many Americans during the “Service of Prayer for the Nation,” at the National Cathedral on January 21. This is an interfaith service that has been a tradition for many years after presidential elections. During her sermon, Bishop Budde addressed the new president, as many preachers have over the years at these services.

Her words inspired and comforted many, as she spoke of a core gospel value – mercy. Bishop Budde asked the president “to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” from those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community to immigrants and refugees. Her book is, as publisher notes say, “an inspirational guide to the key junctures in life that, if navigated with faith and discernment, pave the way for us to become our most courageous selves.”

I have so appreciated getting to know all of you more and more over the past year and a half. And so, with great affection and respect, I pray that you might find graces to hold and support you and comfort and inspire you this Lent.

These graces are amplified by people all over the world walking in this 40-day journey of faith and realness and longing. They are amplified by all those who have walked this journey in the past 2,000+ years. And above all they are amplified by the infinite and profound love of Christ for each one of us.

With love and blessings,

Rev. Patricia +