“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

     So said American author and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau in 1845. Thoreau was poised to commence living, alone and apart, on Walden Pond in eastern Massachusetts.  Out of his solitary ruminations came one of the classics of American literature, On Walden Pond.  

     

     As we continue our journey through Lent, I think occasionally about Thoreau. Although he did not have much interest in conventional religion, he captured, in his writings, much of its essential posture towards earthly existence, particularly during Lent.  Lent reminds us to reduce life to its most fundamental parameters, its most seminal components.  It tells us to set aside worldly distraction and focus on the deeper meanings of life, the most profound sensibilities that inhabit our present existence.  As did Thoreau over one hundred years ago, Lent urges us to live in the world, yes, but live so as to ponder what the world really means, to grasp that from which we and it come.  For Thoreau, this was to immerse oneself in nature (which he often spelled with an upper case "N");  for those of us on our Lenten journey, it is to immerse oneself more fully in the God who made it.  As Thoreau strove to shear himself of the extraneous, so do we strive to separate ourselves from the temporary and, theologically speaking, profane.  We aim to view life through a larger lens.  We look to the greater possibility.

     For the greater possibility is what, for us as well as Thoreau, makes life worth living.  It is what gives existence its point.  Although Thoreau identified this possibility as Nature, I'll go him one step higher and call it that which created nature: God.

     Lent lets us know that we cannot conclude we are alone in the universe.  We who would frame our lives ascetically for Lent understand that we do so because we know that it opens our hearts to what is really and most there, the center of all being.

     By the way, if you can, read On Walden Pond.  It's a classic.