The challenge

At our Shrove Tuesday evening prayer, Fr. Dave mentioned one tool that our parish would be making available to help us make a meaningful spiritual pilgrimage this Lent. For several years they have provided something we can keep in our pocket, purse or prominent location to remind us to keep Christ always at the center of our life. In the past it has varied from plastic to metal crosses to, last year, a piece of metal with a short scripture passage on it. This year, he said, they were offering us stones?

He went on to explain that our scriptural focus would be from the third chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Colossians, and began the relevant quote apparently using a slight paraphrase that I haven't been able to find verbatim in any translation: Because you are God's chosen ones, holy and beloved . . . . This phrase alone has incredible implications and is the perfect context for what comes after, which is a list of virtues in which we should clothe ourselves. The exact virtues vary slightly according to the translation. The wording of the text implies that we do not necessarily already have (all of) these as part of our natural makeup, so we must put them on to cover over what is there naturally, just as we choose the clothes we wear. Of course, if we don't have them ourselves, we must pray for God to provide them for us by transforming us in the Holy Spirit.

What the parish had done, then, was to gather thousands of stones and written on each of them with permanent marker one (or more, in some cases) of these virtues. If you're feeling brave, Fr. Dave said, you could ask your family to choose one of these virtues for you to pray for and work on this Lent. Or, you could choose one for yourself that you feel led to pray for. Or you could just trust the Holy Spirit and pick one out at random. I knew right away that I needed to ask my bride to choose a virtue for me.

So this Lent I am praying for the virtue of gentleness. I know she made a really appropriate choice. I've always felt I had a gentle spirit, and yet I have periodically been so impatiently harsh with myself and around my home. For a long time, oddly, I likely kept the outward manifestations of this in check by my self-condemnation. For me, at least, the conscious conviction that I was the scum of the earth had very different behavioral effects than the unconscious belief of that same thing had promoted. The latter drove me to behavioral choices that brought my reality into alignment with my unconscious self-image. The former required no such resolution, so I tended more toward a meek resignation to everything. We could debate whether striving to embrace a healthier self-image has allowed me to indulge more of my natural - or perhaps learned - inclinations to behave in my home in ways as I learned from my angry father, or has reinvoked a lesser degree of the unconscious struggle to resolve the remnants of my self-judgment. Either way, of late I have tended toward indulging my impatience and frustration. As a result, we've had a heartfelt talk or two about how my actions cause her to feel, so the groundwork for her choice of this stone had already been laid.

I pray, Lord, that you will cover over - and even transform the roots of - any volatility that remains in me so that I might reflect you more perfectly.  Plant and nurture in me the virtue of gentleness.