What is Beautiful, Terrible Lent?
The Content
Kate Bowler's Have a Beautiful Terrible Lent focuses on embracing the paradoxes inherent in the Lenten journey. The use of "beautiful terrible" is an acknowledgment of the challenges and hardships that come with Lent, while also recognizing the beauty and transformative potential within those struggles. Bowler, known for her insights into theology and life, encourages a deep introspection and a nuanced understanding of both the difficulties and the growth that can occur during Lent.
The Class
We will meet online once a week on Wednesdays from 8 pm - 9 pm starting Feb 21, 2024. Please read the content as much as you can before our class and write down any notes and feelings you have. We will then go into a group discussion to share our thoughts.
Meet the Instructor
Week 1:
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSINGThese days of dust.
These days of despair.
We can hear reality speak to us in a clear, ringing voice.
So we approach. Carefully. Barely ready to hear the hard truths we long to be told about beautiful, terrible death.REFLECTION
Is there a thing you’d like to give up? It’s how we practice the feeling of being stripped down. Is there something you’d like to take up instead? Every season is different, so choose something that helps you feel more connected to God’s losing team.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
I have known thankfulness but it all feels too scattered now. nSo let’s start again, shall we? Perhaps I’ll begin by… taking off my socks (who can stop me). Silencing my phone from its buzzing. Sighing like I am writing on a clipboard how deeply disappointed I am. I am.
REFLECTION
Deciding to ask God to help you feel grateful is a truly radical act. It doesn’t negate the truth of what is deeply sad or disappointing but sets alongside that other truth that slipped from view. The fact that this world is beautiful and good too. Would you try to practice gratitude for a moment? Just turn to God and say, Okay. Show me something good.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
God, I come to you as I am. It is all I have, really. And the next one I’m conscious of will be the same. I can feel the way I move, moment to moment,mwithout the comfort of “solutions.”
REFLECTION
Now that we know that we don’t know, let’s enjoy that thought for a moment. Isn’t it delicious that the God who flung stars into space also knows every beginning and end? So let’s settle in for a moment and let ourselves not know in the presence of the God who already knows.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Settle me.
Slow my unsteady pulse.
Remind me that, even if I were to have every “perfect” feeling, that the sheer fact that nothing lasts is an enormous comfort right now.
This ache will pass.
You’re here.
You’re here.REFLECTION
Put your hand on your heart. Or rest your hands gently on your lap. Or lie down because, hey, who else is going to tell you to do that? Breathe in and out. Imagine peace like a little bird in front of you. (I once had many, many birds land on me at once and let’s not imagine that. It’s not peaceful at all. Just pick one bird who really likes you.) But feel that delicate sense of peace land, and then settle in with it.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
The world is loud, God. Only you can convince me of how embarrassingly lovable I can be. Quiet the shame and doubt and self-hatred.
I’m ready to feel love again.
REFLECTION
The heart-melting love of a parent for a child taking her first steps. The glistening eyes of a friend who hurts when you hurt. All the qualities of the best parent or friend or partner one could imagine, only better. That’s the love God has for you. Could you find divine love and other people’s love a little more bearable today? Try a simple exercise like accepting the next compliment you receive. Just say: Thank you. I needed that.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Lord, I know you promise an easy yoke
and a lightness of spirit
that surpasses any reasonable measure,
but today I carry this hurt like a stone.I need the love we genuinely have for each other
to carry some of this weight,
to carry us through these hours together.REFLECTION
Think about a role you play in your family system. Perhaps you are the helpful one or the "check-out-and-just-survive" one. Maybe you are the discouraged one or the incredibly cheerful one. All right. Now think of the person in your life who really knows you best. Are you different when you are with that person? What can we learn about who God wants us to become when we picture ourselves with people who love us best?
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
God of all that we hardly notice, ruler of the ground under our feet and the sky stretched over our heads.
Send your spirit to direct our steps and our thoughts as we stumble around this day and night.
REFLECTION
I love this prayer by the monk Thomas Merton: “The fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.” Can that be our prayer today? We can try to try to want to try.
Week 2: Feb 22-28
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Lord, the big arc of your salvation story
is spread across eternity.
You made us and we fall,
You save us and we rise,
hand clutching hand,
until our stories all become one with yours forever.But today, I wait.
REFLECTION
Could we try that? Make a study of our friends. Who keeps going? Who is teaching us about living with the unknown?
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SCRIPTURE.
BLESSING
God of shelter,
clear a place of sacred rest,
for my strength is failing.REFLECTION
Let’s find a blanket and sigh in God’s direction. I swear that “deep fatigue and/or sorrow” summarizes half of the Psalms, so feel free to consider it spiritual.
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SCRIPTURE.
BLESSING
We’ve seen the sun rise over an empty tomb and life spring up from nothing but dust, so, all things considered, I suppose I should finally believe that you could do a lot with this day, my life, and these weary limbs, and learn to follow the God who goes first.
REFLECTION
Are you the very speedy type? A little sluggish? Or are you dragged down by life? What does “following God” mean to you in this season of life?
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Lord, the shadowed world is full of troubles.
So give me the good, inconvenient work of love.
Link my life to others so that their worries become my own.
Give me errands I don’t want which ease the burdens of others.
Divert me from the plans I’ve made to zip from A to B
when you have better ideas.
Put my hands to work with a less-grumbling heart and let their dreams drift into my own.
REFLECTION
Humor me on this one: in your life-house, who lives there? Who was the last person to move in? Let’s thank God for them.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Lord, in the endlessness of these aches,
my soul’s unanswered calls,
my own unfinished, incompleteness,
close me in.
Close me in
to a space small enough
to enclose this tender heart of mine and soften every worry about forever except the ongoingness of this love.REFLECTION
Everything shrinks down to this: Love has come. What can you do to downsize your life to love today?
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SCRIPTURE.
BLESSING
There you are. Shimmering at the edges
of some extravagant act of love.
There you are. Quickening our steps
toward your surprising favorites:
the weak and poor and scared,
the lasts-becoming-firsts,
those who can’t squeeze through the eye of the needle.
There you are. Calling us strong
when we are weak.
Telling us to link arms with those who suffer.
Explaining how justice will invert the order of things.REFLECTION
Squinting is recalibration. It’s a partial shutting out in order to see better. It blurs what is clearly superfluous or downright distracting so light can infuse even that. What would you see today if you squinted a little? (Other than that you might need reading glasses, which are now available affordably in many colors and styles online. Let me know if that works too.)
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Teach me that when I confess
that you are healing me, changing me,
showing me the burden of a lie
and the power of the truth.
So here I am, God. Shine your light.REFLECTION
Perhaps this might be our simple acknowledgement for the day: we are often wrong, and always loved. Always, always loved.
Week 2:
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
You are making all things beautiful.
You are tapping on all the windows and the doors
so that I will fling them open.
Let your light in, God,
and cast the darkness out.REFLECTION
Search the faces of strangers and friends. Photos on the mantel. At the grocery store. Aren’t we beautiful?
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SCRIPTURE
Psalm 143:8B (BSB, ABBREVIATED)
BLESSING
No matter how much forethought,
working ahead, “life hacking,”
I will never finish it all.
So give me a fresh sense of urgency.
When is the sunrise?
Read me a poem.
Who here has an amazingly embarrassing story?
There will need to be a delay at the pharmacy,
the pickup line, the pickup line, and the checkout counter.
You are giving me back this day.REFLECTION
One of my favorite comedians, Tina Fey, once described this state perfectly as feeling “blorft.” “‘Blorft is an adjective I just made up that means ‘completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’” What do we learn about God and ourselves when we feel blorft that we wouldn’t have learned otherwise?
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
There is no protecting you from me.
Or me from you.
From my insecurities and apathy,
from the shrug of my shoulders
when you say that you are here
to love me in aliveness.Nothing is hidden from you, God.
You can see it all.What a gift, God.
What a gift.REFLECTION
We can have a very Elf on the Shelf view of God at times. THERE IS GOD WATCHING YOU. Shudder. What image of God seeing you and caring about you could you find comforting?
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Lord, I couldn’t bear to lose anymore than
what’s already gone.But then, God, the children wiggle out of favorite clothes
with each passing year
and there are boxes of grandma’s things in the attic.
He left, and she’s gone,
and my closets are stuffed to the ceiling with reminders:
we are losing the life we knew;
we are gaining a life we didn’t imagine.REFLECTION
Let’s bless all of those selves, each down to the tiniest one. Can you name some and give them a good, BLESS YOU?
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Grief. Embarrassment. Shame.
Since we can’t go back, Lord,
pull me forward. Remind me of the
surreal truth that you unwrite any sin.
I confess and you forgive.REFLECTION
Too much regret, and we are mired in shame. Too little regret, and we are stuck in denial. This is the oddest prayer prompt I have ever written, but I think it’s the right one: can we pray for the right amount of regret?
Week 3:
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SCRIPTURE
Jeremiah 6:16 (NIV)
BLESSING
Maybe, God, it is simply this:
If I desire and love the good that I know how to do
(however incomplete it is),
the next step will be toward you.You will meet us where we fall short.
When we fall headlong down the wrong rabbit holes.
When we need strength for our burdens and healing for our brokenness.REFLECTION
What is the next right step that seems obvious to you? Or even a tiny bit obvious? Write it down or put it in your calendar. Take courage. You’re on your way.
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SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Bless me as I learn how to shift my awareness,
to grow in wisdom and in peace.
Root me in kindness toward my own unsettled heart
and thank you for teaching me that somewhere,
in my own heart and mind and body and soul,
good truths are being told.You live in me.
What a wonder.REFLECTION
Writer Margaret Silf gave this advice for those who want to try: “In the silence of our hearts, we must wait patiently for the compass needle to steady. Then it will point to true north, the still center… and we will be enabled to move forward again.” Imagine that needle within you shaking and then starting to still. Breathe. Listen. -
SCRIPTURE
BLESSING
Blessed are we, looking to you, God,
and to Jesus, our friend,
in the dawning of that unshakable kingdom
we know but cannot see.
Lead us there.REFLECTION
In what situations do you feel like you always have clarity? What do you suspect helps you keep that perspective?
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SCRIPTURE
John 8:36 (NIV)
BLESSING
God, your verdict on my life is love.
If there is something terrible, awful I need to change,
you will nudge me, prompt me,
not in the voice of my worst critic.
You tell me as a friend.
You tell me what is and has ever been true.
It is gentle and complete,
yet breaks every chain.
Quiet my self-critical heart,
leave what reminders are there for my good,
and free me from all that makes me forget
the joy and freedom of having you as my only judge.
REFLECTION
Who makes (or made) you feel deeplyunderstood? Forget your critics for a moment and imagine that they are here with you. What loveliness and limitations do they see in you?
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SCRIPTURE
Psalm 54:4 (NASB)
BLESSING
Perhaps you might begin with the fact that I paused now at all.
Or the fact that feeling nothing is a welcome break
for a heart like mine.
Or perhaps you’ll place a little sticky note
on the mirrored surface of my mind which reads:100% Guaranteed Human.
You know. You knew.
If, in moments like this, I grow first tired, then numb,
you will wake me, rest assured, with the gentlest hello.
REFLECTION
Numbing is the body’s disconnect from the possibility that something might overwhelm. Maybe pain. Maybe too much of a good thing. It’s not fun, but it is a clue that we need downtime that might lead to rest. Go for it.
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SCRIPTURE
Deuteronomy 31:8A (NIV)
BLESSING
So the only thing to do is
to ask you to bless the flow
once I let go.Bless it with presence of mind
to talk to you in real time,
ask you questions,
and listen underneath
for the reality that you are here,
and most interested in who I become in the meantime.REFLECTION
Okay, but for real: if you could have another version of yourself, what would that self be doing? Sometimes our little fantasies help shake loose a dream. My other self would live in Paris, and she is a diplomat. So, wait, maybe I should try to re-learn French. What dreams are bouncing around in your head?
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SCRIPTURE
Revelation 21:4 (ESV)
BLESSING
Blessed as we, finding a radical acceptance
of the intolerable, the absurd, the unwanted.We are foregoing ease for wisdom,
accepting the deepest kind of self-knowledge
that we can be healed while in pain,
whole while broken,
loved while rejected.It’s here. It’s true. I can see it.
You have made me a kind of miracle.REFLECTION
We do not always know how to endure the pain that lingers. But we know that it includes some kind of radical acceptance of our finitude, even as we know we fight on. So let’s pray for a bit of that acceptance, shall we? God, help me accept my fragility. And promise you will hold me together
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SCRIPTURE
Revelation 21:4 (ESV)
BLESSING
Blessed as we, finding a radical acceptance
of the intolerable, the absurd, the unwanted.We are foregoing ease for wisdom,
accepting the deepest kind of self-knowledge
that we can be healed while in pain,
whole while broken,
loved while rejected.It’s here. It’s true. I can see it.
You have made me a kind of miracle.REFLECTION
We do not always know how to endure the pain that lingers. But we know that it includes some kind of radical acceptance of our finitude, even as we know we fight on. So let’s pray for a bit of that acceptance, shall we? God, help me accept my fragility. And promise you will hold me together.
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SCRIPTURE
Psalm 62:8 (NIV)
BLESSING
So how about it?
How about just for a day we turn the sign around
to show what’s on the back:
“Closed!”
And feel that sigh that comes
when it rings true
that the one thing necessary for now
is to lock the door.
Not accept the pain of the world as our own.
Not feel every joy and sorrow like a full-time job.
But click off the lights and say,
at least to ourselves,
Be back later.REFLECTION
Pretend you have one of those old-school pagers (the precursor of cell phones that people used to clip onto their belt). Someone can ping you at any time, but you can’t ping them. Imagine all the people who could buzz you, and everything they want. Whew. Overwhelming. Now think of a few by name and send them a quick mental, “Bless you.” Now, look. You need a little mental break. So shut off your mental pager for a certain number of hours. Perhaps turn your actual cell phone on silent if you dare. Good job. Now stay “offline” for a set amount of time so you can recharge your lovely self.
Week 3: Mar 7
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SCRIPTURE
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NIV
BLESSING
Blessed are you, gently beginning to name
your own felt needs and look to the comforts
that will sustain you.Blessed are you who have discovered
that in your humanity you have been welcomed into the community of the wounded.
May you feel all of your own woundedness,
and the tenderness of your own heart,
seen, loved, and held.REFLECTION
What is the most comforting thing that you do for yourself? I have an overly elaborate facewashing bedtime routine that started when I was sick. I took a minute to say, "Oh, hey, the day was costly but here I am." Do you have a little habit that restores your soul? If you don't, see if you can invent one. (Beverages. Sitting in a certain place. Anything with water. Something can always do the trick."
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SCRIPTURE
John 14:27 (NIV)
BLESSING
God, this is endless.
And I know I won't be functional.
Let's do something about this.
Tomorrow, after a nap.
Let's leave the problem-solving until then.
Right now, return me to myself.Let my heart slow into that soft and even beat
that says, there is nothing, nothing,
nothing to do
but be.REFLECTION
Take out a notepad and put it beside your bed. (Don't use your phone. Your phone is a tar pit of entertainment.) When you wake up, or can't sleep, scribble down any to-dos or especially buzzy thoughts. No judgement. Can you imagine leaving those worries on the table for another day?
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SCRIPTURE
Philippians 4:6 (NIV)
BLESSING
God, open your heart to mine
and pour in your peace.
Let your mind flow into these
scattered thoughts that seem
to want to cling to worries
and coalesce like metal filings to a magnet.
I need your spirit to bless me
with a calm that isn't mine to create.
Bless all my stubbornness
and allow me to, wonderfully,
just give up a moment.
To stop fighting my own needs
and concerns.REFLECTION
Sit somewhere comfortable and let your body soften. Let the air comfortably expand the spaces that are easily fillable. Breathe out and mix the air with the thought that worries you, giving it to God to take for a minute. Let yourself pause and rest, with nothing to do. And in your own time, continue until you feel yourself sighhhh. You'll hear it. That's when you're done, love.
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SCRIPTURE
Proverbs 3:5 (NIV)
BLESSING
God, I am disappointed and embarrassed
at what people get up to
in the name of religion.
God, come and show yourself again.
Show me faith that cannot be faked. Let me see you in the loveliness of others
living out their faith so genuinely,
so honestly,
that you shine through.REFLECTION
Think of a person you know who is incredibly gracious about disagreement. What are some of their methods for cultivating grace?
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SCRIPTURE
Ecclesiastes 1:18 (NIV)
BLESSING
Blessed are we, trying to
manage the unmangeable,
the fact that this is a final parting.
No, this is the second last parting.
But we will see them again, you promised.
One has gone from us down a path
we cannot see.
And we mush stand and mourn,
at a distance.REFLECTION
Jesus says that blessed are those who mourn, which is precisely when we feel exiled from any sense of blessing. But I believe in those words is a promise: God draws near to the suffering. So that's it. Nothing to do except say, "God, you said you would be there. Be here now."
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SCRIPTURE
Luke 12:27 (NASB)
BLESSING
Beauty brings a kind of grief.
Because its perfection rings so true
it calls out everything else
that has ever fallen short.
In me. In us. In everything.But that’s the thing.
It’s just the way of it:
that beauty will always be crushingly lovely.
We are grass. We are fireflies.
We are the day that the Lord has made.REFLECTION
Today or tomorrow I want you to go find something you are delighted by: birds, macaroni and cheese, whatever. It’s out there somewhere.
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SCRIPTURE
John 11:33 (VOICE)
BLESSING
Blessed are you who choose to show up
without judgment,
with little gifts
or small acts of practical help.
You know the gift of compassion.Today, help me stand
ready to hear those divine whispers
nudging me to give compassion away.
Naturally. Freely.
And help me find those who, to my surprise,
want to pour back into me
(which, fine, you know I hate receiving).REFLECTION
The week before Easter we think a lot about Jesus’s deep humanity. His soon-to-be scarred hands. His loneliness. His compassion. In what way does your humanity make you more (not less) like Jesus?
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SCRIPTURE
Psalm 86:1-2 (NIV)
BLESSING
I feel entirely helpless and unable to dictate terms.
So…whatever. (Can I say that, God?)
I just need help right now.
I need your compassion and love
to be active in practical ways,
to move into what has been unmovable for so long,
to be the change I need,
that the world needs.Clear a path. Make a way. I need you now.
REFLECTION
During these days leading up to Jesus’ death, we feel his dread, his fear, his helplessness. And we feel our own. Do you have a “help!” prayer you want to try right now? It’s the simplest kind and usually the last one I reach for. God, seriously, help me.
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SCRIPTURE
Psalm 4:6A (NLV)
BLESSING
Let me sense you with me, here in this
unfinishable life.
I must heap these burdens
(my arms are full of them)
into your willing hands.
Show me how I can be like you
in the improbable and creative
and even irreverent ways
that you staved off
the ugliness around you.
How you surprised us all
with the reality of life.
God, somehow, let this day be a sign
of good things to come.REFLECTION
Where do you look for a sign of good things to come? Nature? Family? Friends? Cat videos? If nothing comes to mind, take a walk or scroll through your photos. Let yourself think, “AHA!” when you see the first lovely bit of hope. We will need every bit of light to see in the dark.
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SCRIPTURE
John 13:21-25 (NIV)
BLESSING
We don’t know it, Jesus,
but you will feed us, wash us,
serve us, save us.
And we will do our best to set you aside.
But this is your great stubbornness:
how you give us what we need, even as we
refuse it.REFLECTION
Many of us, when faced with something good, instinctively step back. No, thank you. Stop looking at me, complimenting me, loving me, helping me. This is a day in the Christian year when we are getting ready to admit that we will say no, even to God. Let’s pray: God, you never step back from us, even in our refusal. Help us learn to be better at being loved.
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SCRIPTURE
John 19:14B-18 (ESV)
BLESSING
To the cross, that’s where love led you.
So that’s where we come too,
to stand and grieve with Mary and John,
your mother and your closest friend,
overwhelmed that it should come to this:
powerlessness and utter loss.Blessed are we who remain here in wonder,
in the stillness, with the silence of death
so heavy upon us,
asking again, "Jesus,
is this how it goes?
Is this how love wins?"REFLECTION
Jesus’s violent death stands in front of us as an impossibility. How can the savior die? And, really, how can the ugliness of death visit each of us? The feeling is one of horror. Allow yourself to think about the horror of it for a moment without turning away. This is what we do during Holy Week: we do not flinch from the truth.
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SCRIPTURE
Matthew 27:57-60 (NIV)
BLESSING
Jesus, you came down from heaven,
yes, but then you kept coming down,
down to the sick and the poor,
the lost and forsaken,
down to the utterly brokenhearted,
because that’s who you are.
That’s what you do.
So we wait.REFLECTION
If you have ever been left waiting without an answer to prayer. If you have been holding the heaviest burden or intractable pain and wondered, so what now? I’m supposed to just…wait here? Suffer here? Forever? Today is the great acknowledgement of all those of us who wait. If this were a movie of the cosmic drama, we would see the screen split. We would see the buried savior, awaiting resurrection; the believer standing utterly alone, believing God is dead.
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SCRIPTURE
John 20:11-16A (NIV)
BLESSING
This is what our newborn church looks like:
blessed.
Blessed in our fear and inadequacy.
Blessed by your faith in us.
Blessed that we received, by your own hand,
the gift of hope—
the beginning of the end of sin and of death,
and the spark of the love that propels us
as we follow you as best we can along that downward path
with all the humility we can manage.
You came back to us.Alleluia.
Alleluia.
Alleluia.
REFLECTION
The downward path. Does it hurt? Can it embarrass you? Is it absurdly inconvenient? Yes, yes, and yes. But also we are learning to tell the story of our lives. We are loved. We are strengthened even when we feel undone. We learn to serve even as we ask for help. What has the downward path looked like for you?
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