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Newsletter Message from Fr. Lawrence: ‘Kicking Until It Bleeds’
In one of his songs, Bruce Cockburn speaks of the difficulty of being
lovers (we would add “and Christians”) in a dangerous time, and he says
“Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. You got to kick
at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” Though the image is somewhat
lurid, Bruce is correct.
Great Lent is about learning to kick. Everything worth having—a
successful marriage between Christians, a vibrant prayer life, a life of
integrity in the world—all comes with a cost and a fight. (The World,
the Flesh and the Devil will make sure of that.) The darkness is all
around us, blinding our spiritual senses, weakening our will, making
compromise and spiritual failure easy. We have to kick back, and kick
hard. And repeatedly.
That is what our Lenten fasting is about, and our attendance at
Presanctified Liturgy. It is easy to just roll over and play dead, to
take the way the rest of the world takes, to make excuses. But such
playing dead too often leads to becoming truly dead. As Orthodox
disciples of Jesus, playing dead and giving up is not an option. We are
called to live in the light, and to push back the darkness that threatens
us and those we love. We are called to kick. Great Lent is upon us.
Let the kicking begin.
