Uncovering the angel within

I know that many non-Christians take issue with what they perceive as the Christian emphasis on sinfulness. And I agree that we sometimes get a bit carried away with that -- I am thinking of the Hellfire and Damnation preachers of the American Restoration period, and the bizarre instances of self-flagellation recently highlighted in Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.

Which means that Lent, with its emphasis on sinfulness and penance, can be an uncomfortable concept to deal with. But as I read Henri Nouwen's Encounters with Merton, I see again why this piece of our faith is every bit as essential as the understanding that the primary message is that of God's love and forgiveness.

In fact, reading Merton, I realize that the work we do -- and God does through us -- in the course of Lent is a variation on the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. With Tonglen, if we are hurt, or angry, or in pain, we are to remember that we are not alone in whatever feeling is troubling us, and to breathe in the hurt, anger and pain of the rest of the world. Then, when we breathe out, we breathe out to the world whatever peace or joy we have found within.

The Lenten process is similar: we look at the sin, evil and violence in the world, and seek to acknowledge the roots of sin, evil and violence in our own souls, learning that "the impurity of the world is a mirror of the impurity of our own hearts."

In both actions, Tonglen and the self-examination of Lent, the result is compassion, "a compassion that comes out of a deep experience of solidarity, in which one recognizes that the evil, sin and violence one sees in the world and in the other are deeply rooted in one's own heart."

If we can open our own hearts, see and forgive the ugliness within, then we become less prone to bitterness, which is, Nouwen tells us, "the reaction of one who expects something from another without daring to look into his or her own heart, and therefore becomes quickly disappointed."

In the experience of admitting our own spiritual bankruptcy and finding forgiveness for that, we are better equipped to be voices for truth and non-violence in community. Because in the process of Lenten examination, we learn that evil is not "an irreversible, visible, sharply outlined tumor to be cut out" but rather a universal and pervasive experience which can be turned into good by forgiveness.

Knowing that, we then understand that "to punish and destroy the oppressor is merely to initiate a new cycle of violence and oppression. The only real liberation is that which liberates both the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time from the same tyrannical automatism of the violent process which contains within itself the curse of irreversibility."

It is, of course, an easy step from this point to move into condemnation of the forces of our own government, heading off into Iraq to commit violence as punishment for violence. But I don't think Lent is about the easy steps; I think it is about the hard ones. For those, we need to look closer to home -- to the family member whom we ostracize because of their perceived betrayals; to the neighbor we want to punish for destroying the neighborhood peace; to the community leaders we resent for their mismanagement of contracts or money; to the religious leaders whose hypocrisy we find so distasteful; to all the people toward whom we sense an inner bitterness, for whatever reasons.

Psychologists are fond of saying that we hate most in others the sins of which we ourselves are most culpable. The dark parts of the shadow, the ones we can't see or won't take the time to explore, are the ones we are most likely to project onto others and despise.

Lent is our annual opportunity to reverse the irreversible; to step in silence and solitude into the darkest recesses of the heart, carrying with us the light of forgiveness and love. Because I believe that it is only when we come to fully understand the ugliness of our own internal spaces that we can uncover the angel within and empower it to shine as a beacon for truth, love and forgiveness.