Look! Where are you focusing your lens?

Lately I have been looking back at photos from recent trips and some from years past. I enjoy this traveling back in time. This practice helps me tickle a memory awake and see again what I might have rushed through when I originally snapped the picture.

The opportunity to see again helps me count the blessing of a moment beyond what was captured by the camera. Each image emerges as a line in a poem or in a story. Sometimes I am also surprised by what I see in the photo that was not the focus at the time. With this comes the recognition that we don’t always see everything that stands before us.

Alexandra Horowitz, in her book On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, notes, “The world is wildly distracting.” We simply can’t take it all in, so we learn to see without really seeing. She adds, “Expertise changes what you see and hear, and it even changes what you can attend to.”

Consider your own focus from day to day. After a long weekend, we often have to refocus ourselves on our work and the week ahead. Where your focus lies determines what you will see. Consider as well that our lens can get blurry as we proceed on autopilot or in a rush, and we may not always see what stands in front of us.

Lent, which calls us to spiritual growth as we walk together as community to Easter, helps us pay attention to where we point our lens. During this Lenten season, we can refocus our eyes on our faith life, on the people in our lives and those in need; and on the blessings we sometimes take for granted.

Pope Francis in his Message for Lent said, “Lent summons us, and enables us, to come back to the Lord wholeheartedly and in every aspect of our life.”

In essence, it helps us focus, look more closely. It’s healthy to pause from the rush that can take us off track. Bishop Mario Avilés, who led a Lenten Retreat for our diocesan staff in February, cautioned us to be mindful of what we do and what we see. We have to be careful, he said, with thorns on the path that can choke our faith life and our relationship with others.

Speaking about the reality of sin, Pope Francis reminds us in his Lenten Message, “In order to confound the human heart, the devil, who is ‘a liar and the father of lies’ (Jn 8:44), has always presented evil as good, falsehood as truth. That is why each of us is called to peer into our heart to see if we are falling prey to the lies of these false prophets. We must learn to look closely, beneath the surface, and to recognize what leaves a good and lasting mark on our hearts, because it comes from God and is truly for our benefit.”

Almsgiving, one of the spiritual practices of Lent, provides us as well with an opportunity to see through another’s eyes, or through their perspective to gain a better understanding of what others might be dealing with.

In his homily on Ash Wednesday, Bishop Daniel E. Flores emphasized that during Lent we walk together towards the Cross and the Resurrection. To walk together, he said,  means we are connected to each other. Those connections are deep and imply some responsibilities to one another.

While the grain of the world has always been individualistic, Bishop Flores said, the clarion call of the Lenten season is to be people of mercy. Mercy is being able to respond to the person in need next to you, just as Jesus responded.

Ultimately, Lent is about refocusing our lives as Christians upon the connections we have. Starting with prayer, he said. “Prayer connects us to God. If we aren’t praying and asking God for help, how can we be of any good and use to anybody else?”

Bishop Flores added that almsgiving is “recognizing that what I have is not just for me alone, that I have a responsibility to use the goods that God puts in my possession for the good of other people.” It is “about that sense of giving of yourself, not just about material things, but of the time you have, and the support you give each other. He advises us to more conscious about how we treat each other, starting with family and friends.

The Holy Father tells us as well, “Love can also grow cold in our own communities.” He reminds us, that in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, he “sought to describe the most evident signs of this lack of love: selfishness and spiritual sloth, sterile pessimism, the temptation to self-absorption, constant warring among ourselves, and the worldly mentality that makes us concerned only for appearances, and thus lessens our missionary zeal.”

By focusing on the people in our lives, we can prevent love from growing cold in our communities, and it might help us see something we might be missing. We might also try to see through another person’s perspective – an elderly family member or someone in our community in need.

As we begin to pay more attention on where we focus our lens, we may gain a better vantage point to recognize and appreciate the everyday moments in our lives, and maybe to see with the eyes of a child and their sense of wonder. Consider too the value of looking with all our senses, not just our eyes.

Indeed, Lent is a time for fasting, almsgiving and prayer. It is also a time to count our blessings. How often do we thank the Lord for the graces in our lives?

(Originally published in March 2018 edition of The Valley Catholic newspaper)

Meet Me in the Desert (A Lenten Prayer)

Lord of Lent, Lord of Easter,
As you went into the desert
So do I follow
Putting aside that which distracts me
Grabs at me
Falsely claims me.

To search inside
To confront myself
My best, my worst
My good works and my sins.

And each time, I find you there
To call to me again
With words of challenge and words of mercy.

And as I fall to my knees, in prayer, in fasting
In sacrifice and penitence
Somehow, you have it in yourself to reach out
and gently lift me
To renew me
To claim me as nothing of this world can claim
me.

Meet me in the desert, Lord.
Claim me anew.

Amen.

Lenten prayer from Catholic Relief Services

Into the Desert

I look forward to Lent more and more each year.  I see the desert journey as an opportunity to reflect on my ways, on my steps and missteps. It’s a chance to get back to where I need to be, to readjust my direction according to God’s will. The desert provides an open space free of distractions. It’s up to us of course to eliminate the distractions that present themselves in our day to day walk.

Pope Francis said, “Lent calls us to “give ourselves a ‘shake-up.’” In his homily on Ash Wednesday he said, “With its calls to conversion, Lent comes providentially to rouse us, to shake us from our torpor, from the risk of moving forward [merely] by inertia.”

I need the shakeup. I need to be roused. Already, I feel the energy that comes from refocusing and putting aside all that weighs us. I’ve learned that the penitential practice of giving something up for Lent, may seem like a sacrifice at first, but actually it’s a blessing.  In the end, we are better for the experience. I find that fasting and giving something up makes more room in my life not only for prayer but also for family time and writing.  

As for the prescribed days of abstinence from meat on Ash Wednesday and Fridays, I can’t count these days as sacrifice as I crave, year round, the desert dishes served during the Lenten season, starting with nopalitos en salsa.

I do have some challenges ahead of me. By the grace of God, I pray I am roused into action.

A ver que nos espera en estos días en el desierto.