My Journey toward a Decolonized Lent
February 26th is Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of the Lenten season.
Growing up in a conservative Korean immigrant church, I didn’t really celebrate Lent. In fact, I barely celebrated any of the church holy days and had no category for the Church calendar, or even a sense of rhythm and season to the year.
After college, I had the privilege of being part of a church that taught me more about the church calendar. I came to love Advent, learned that Christmastide was actually 12 days, experienced my first Epiphany pageants, waved actual palms on Palm Sunday, had my feet washed in a Maundy Thursday service, learned to sit in the actual darkness of a Good Friday service, pondered the mystery of Holy Saturday, and learned to call Easter “Resurrection Sunday.”
But I always had a hard time with Lent.
One of my difficulties with Lent had to do with the practice of fasting. Every year, I would make commitments for myself regarding all the things that I would fast from, and then would fail. Miserably. In some ways, I guess that’s appropriate for the Lenten season. But I hated the feeling of burden and sacrifice that came with fasting for Lent, and generally ended up feeling legalistic about fasting, which would then lead me to break my fast during Lent and give up entirely. As I focused more on what I was giving up than what I was taking on, I would lose sight of Jesus.
In more recent years, as I’ve grown in awareness about how colonialism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy have influenced my faith and theological lens, I began to question how to engage Lent. I noticed ways that observances of Lent could potentially reinforce unhealthy understandings of “taking up the cross,” particularly for abused, marginalized, and disenfranchised communities. I mourned the ways that mainstream conceptions of Lent could erase the historic, systemic, and communal nature of sin, focusing primarily on individualistic guilt and moral failing. I felt the ways that the “heaviness” and pathos of Lent could feel burdensome for particular communities who are already weighed down, daily, by the brokenness of our world. I read books, devotionals, and commentaries written by white men that felt both theologically shallow and socially tone deaf. And I hungered for a wider, more diverse space for engagement.
During Lent the past 5 years, I’ve used a different devotional or reflection tool each year. While I may not have intentionally chosen them at the time, in hindsight, these resources have each played a role in my slow journey towards a decolonized experience of Lent.
Here are some resources I’ve used in past years:
In 2015, I was part of a book club exploring the intersections of theology, race, and faith, and we happened to read The Cross and the Lynching Tree right before Lent. Needless to say, I used the book as my “devotional” of sorts that year, and it has become one of the most impactful books I’ve read about the cross. In reading it, I had my eyes completely opened to the highly political nature of the death of Jesus, while gaining a compelling understanding of the cross that was not based primarily in penal substitutionary atonement. I still recommend this book to many people today.
In 2016, I went through the book Prayer: 40 days of Practice by Justin McRoberts and Scott Erickson, alongside a group of other women in my life. While this book doesn’t explicitly engage issues of race, justice, or politics (and is written by two white men), it was a helpful turn away from more intellectual, heady understandings of Lent. Because it is an illustrated prayer book, with very few words and very short guided prayers, it led me towards a more contemplative and artistic exploration of Lent. It forced me to slow down and engage a different part of my brain, which I needed at the time. And it contains some intriguing reflections on the nature of what it means to be human.
In 2017, I co-wrote the Lenten Lamentations Devotional- alongside Dominique Gilliard. It was a huge undertaking to research and write this daily devotional, with each day telling the story of a racial atrocity that happened that very same day in history. I learned a LOT of history from writing and using this devotional, and mourned the ways that history continues to repeat itself due to our nation’s inability to fully confess, repent of, and make reparations for our sins.
Quite a number of the days explore historic and current lynchings, which helped me think about the cross (again) in light of our nation’s history.
While the 2017 version dates won’t match up with this year’s Lent perfectly, you can still follow along daily. The first day of Lent in 2017 was March 1, so it’s only a few days off. You can download it here.
In 2018, I was struck by the work of the Progressive Asian American Christians group in writing a daily devotional for Lent. While I didn’t follow it daily, I was thankful for voices and stories that I resonated with and was encouraged by the platform it created for Asian American voices. Because each day was a reflection on Scripture, I was also grateful for reflections on the Bible that weren’t centering whiteness or European theology. The reflections can be found on their online magazine, Diverging, here.
In 2019, I was invited to contribute to Resipiscence A Lenten Devotional for Dismantling White Supremacy, edited by Vanisha Hasan and Nichola Torbett. While I was unable to do so because of a myriad of life transitions at the time, I appreciated the vision of curating daily reflections from a very diverse group of contributors. I also loved that it was based on the lectionary, while centering the diverse experiences, theologies, and identities of its authors to prevent a vision of how to dismantle white supremacy.
Here is the 2020 version, downloadable here.
This year, I am super excited to reflect on Drawing Closer to Creator and Creation: An Indigenous Guide to Lent by Randy Woodley, founder of Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth justice. My family was super privileged to spend a week with Randy and Edith Woodley in November of 2017, and I am still unpacking the many gifts they offered, in terms of decolonized faith, our relationship with the land, and our need for one another. I am super excited to go through this resource. Each week focuses on a different theme and offers three reflection questions to guide the week.
You can sign up to receive it as a PDF via email here.
A few other resources people have shared with me:
- Seven Last Words of Christ our Black Mother- by Christina Cleveland
- An American Lent- by the Repentance Project
- Women of Color Only- A Lenten Practice- A list curated by Sojourners
- A Franciscan Guide to a Green Lent- 40 days of creation-centered activities
How will you be observing Lent this year? What ways is the Spirit leading you?
