Lent and Easter 2023
For the season of Lent this year, I gave up silence.
You might wonder what that looks like.
So did I.
I still don’t exactly know.
I love quiet.
I love to be it.
I love to be surrounded by it.
When I was about ten years old, I heard from a friend that a mutual acquaintance had described me as being “so quiet.” I took this to be a negative evaluation of my personality and it confirmed what I was already suspicious of- that it wasn’t good to be quiet. I immediately commenced with a plan to become outgoing. It didn’t take long for me to say several things that I regretted and give up the entire operation. But I carried with me the fear that my quietness would result in me being overlooked by the world.
It's taken a long time, but I finally feel like I am proud to embrace “quiet” as part of my personality, and accept that it has its pros and cons, just like any trait does. As comfortable as I am with my quiet ways, I do have to be careful that I am not choosing quietness out of fear, stubbornness, or laziness. Those were the things I wanted to push back against during this season.
All I knew when I started was that one way I would break some of the silence within me would be to share my written words, both on social media and here on Substack. Hence, the three-part series about money that I shared here.
Another opportunity to choose words over silence came my way through my college friend, Vanessa. She has a teacher friend in Colombia who is teaching English to an eleventh-grade class. This teacher friend was in search of a person who speaks English as their first language to meet with her class over Zoom to give the students a chance to practice their conversational English skills. Vanessa wondered if I would be willing to do it.
Sigh.
Although I loved the concept of it, I felt a lot of nervousness as I considered doing it. I also already had a legitimately overloaded to-do list, filled with anxiety-inducing tasks.
I said yes to doing it, fully planning to convince Ricky to do it so that I wouldn’t have to.
Because Ricky would just be SO GOOD at that kind of thing!
However, I had trouble getting Ricky to commit to doing it, and something in me knew that I would regret it if I didn’t do it.
After hunkering down and doing some reflecting on why I felt so afraid of doing this, I realized that 1) I was afraid of making the students feel bad if I happened to have trouble understanding them and 2) I felt like I had no idea what to expect from the interaction. I emailed the English teacher and asked if she would be able to share more information about what the topics of conversation would be. She sent me a list of questions/topics that the students had been practicing. Many of them were questions about what my life is like or what the country of Canada is like. Feeling much better, I prepared a powerpoint with some pictures to help illustrate my verbal responses. I also wrote out a list to remind myself of what mattered to me in this situation.
I was still nervous when the time came to do the call, but it ended up being so much fun!
Those students did so well with their English-speaking. They asked me many, many questions in the 45- minutes. Questions about my favourite books, movies, shows, music, and foods.
They even went off-script and started asking questions like:
“What is your personality like?” (Surprisingly hard to answer. I’m not even sure what I said.)
“What are your dreams for the future?” (Again, difficult to put into a succinct answer. Writing, children, appreciating the beauty of everyday life?)
“Why don’t you play video games?” (Too busy reading.😉)
“How do you feel about feminism?” (Equal opportunities and respect for everyone, for sure!)
I had fun turning the questions around and hearing their responses too.
Kilometers and kilometers away, in Bogota, Colombia, there is a class of curious, energetic, good-hearted teenagers, who also love the show Stranger Things.
I love knowing that.
It wasn’t until after the interaction that I realized that I had chosen words over silence, and that it had been a gift.
Another time that I said no to silence was during the Good Friday service at church. At the beginning of the service, we were told there would be a point in the service where we would have the option of going up to the front of the church to stand for a moment of reflection in front of the stained-glass window portraying Jesus on the cross. I often opt out of public moments like that because I tend to disassociate rather than experience it as a meaningful moment anyways and it’s just easier to stay seated.
This time it felt like going forward would be the right choice. Part of the reason may have been that I have become accustomed to going forward for communion every Sunday, and that has become a meaningful moment that I anticipate each week. On Good Friday, however, communion is absent from the service, cementing the grief of the Jesus’ death. Going forward, even if it was not for communion, felt like a way of acknowledging the divide between life and death, good and evil, communion and loneliness- my own curve towards darkness and oblivion, even as I desire light.
To fight against my tendency to merely go through the motions, I chose two sentences that I wanted to pray when the moment came.
A simple solution, but those pre-strung words increased my ability to be present in the moment. Going forward was a way of choosing words, movement, and presence. These things were better than silence and stillness would have been.
I didn’t experience any dramatically life-changing moments in this season of Lent, but it was a good exercise for me to choose to be mindful of the fact that I get to choose between silence and words.
And then… there was Easter weekend, which contained multiple layers of an intentional leaning towards something instead of nothing of its own for me.
Right after the Good Friday service, Ricky, myself, and my parents headed for Pennsylvania for the weekend, anticipating hearing my brother Kenton sing in a program there, as well as spending some time doing touristy sorts of things.
We arrived at our Airbnb late on Friday evening, after a smooth trip that involved delicious meatloaf at Perkins, a beautiful sunset, and me falling in love with the Volkswagen Jetta that we were driving.
On Saturday morning, Ricky and I spent some time with his friend Troy. It was fun to get a tour of the school where Troy teaches and then eat brunch together. I didn’t take a picture of what I ordered but let me tell you… it was perfect and I will remember it forever. It involved a biscuit, hashbrown, scrambled eggs, cheese, and sausage gravy, all perfectly piled on top of each other.
After that, the boys went off to spend the day doing various active things, and my parents and I headed out to explore.
Our main destination was Longwood Gardens, but we made a quick stop at The Main Street Exchange on the way there.
We also stopped for some food!
And then… Longwood Gardens!
I was already thrilled by the green grass and blossoms that PA was showing off, but these gardens took the springtime vibes to a whole new level. There aren’t really words to describe the relief that the colours and scents of springtime blossoms bring with them.
I already want to go back to Longwood and spend more time there.
That evening, we enjoyed taking in the Lyrica Sacra concert that Kenton was performing in. It was a beautiful and meaningful program, and I’m so grateful that we were able to be there for it.
The next day was Easter Sunday. After a simple breakfast at the Airbnb, we packed up and were on our way home.
A most excellent Easter weekend!
How about you? What did you do to celebrate Easter?