Cycling through Lent

The Christian year revolves around two cycles: the Advent-Christmas cycle and the Lent-Easter cycle. Being a Christian is like riding a bicycle (bi-cycle) which carries us through the year.  One of these cycles has to do with light and the other darkness.

Advent-Christmas is about birth and light. Light comes into the darkness in the birth of Christ. Lent-Easter is about the darkness of the death of Christ, which culminates in the light of Easter dawn and resurrection.

Christmas originally fell on the Winter Solstice, the moment when days began to get longer, when light begins to triumph over darkness. Easter falls at the time of the Spring Equinox, the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when day and night are equal.

Both religious cycles are related to the interplay of day and night, light and darkness in nature. These liturgical cycles are the equivalent to the Yin Yang symbol of ancient China. The yin yang is a visual expression of duality within a wider all-encompassing unity. The cycles of the Christian year communicate the same thing.

Lent is a meditation on duality and nonduality. One interesting aspect of the season is that the forty days of Lent do not include Sundays. Sundays are feast days in the midst of a season of the fast days. They are oases of light in the darkness, like the circles of light and darkness in the Yin Yang symbol.

Like the Yin Yang symbol, the cross is a symbol of light and darkness, good and evil. The Cross is an instrument of death. Yet the empty cross is a symbol of resurrection – because Jesus is not on it. The crucifix, the cross with Jesus still on it, did not become a symbol of Christianity until the Middle Ages and never became the symbol of Protestant Christianity.

Both the Cross and the Yin Yang express duality encompassed by a greater unity. The Cross is more ancient than Christianity or the Yin Yang, and is found across cultures. A cross unites the four cardinal directions. It unites up and down, left and right. It unites heaven and earth, humans to humans, and humans to all things. It represents both divine and human love.

I find the Yin Yang symbol as powerful as the Cross. The movement of Yin-Yang communicates the ever-changing association of good with evil. This is on my mind a lot this Lent. The ongoing political and social strife in our American society disturbs my peace of mind. Sometimes I find myself thinking about it at night as I lay down to sleep.

At such times I have taken to picturing the Yin Yang in my mind’s eye. I picture the light and dark as the interaction between conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, justice and injustice, right and wrong. Of course both sides of the political spectrum see themselves as good and their enemies as evil. That is why this symbol is so useful. It helps me see the two as relative. There is not one without the other.

In my mind’s eye the two sides of the Yin-Yang are like the storms on a weather map. From a higher perspective, good and evil are storms in the human psyche and human society. There is no such thing as good and evil outside of the human mind. Humans create these categories, and they become very real to us. So when my mind is disturbed by what is happening in American society and in the world, I let the Yin Yang bring my mind into a state of equilibrium, and I fall asleep.

In a similar way Lent helps me see the forces of good and evil as part of a greater whole. When Christians observe Lent we enter into the passion play of good and evil. In the end history is part of a bigger unity. Duality is viewed in the light of nonduality.

Lent is not just about giving up something – like sweets, meat, or television - for 40 days. It is giving up duality. It is seeing the Risen Lord in the Crucified One. It is seeing both aspects of Christ in the One Reality that we call God.

Lent is seeing ourselves in the story of Jesus. It is seeing the story of Jesus in the human stories playing out in our society and the world. It is not just an ancient Bible story. It is the Bible story reflected in newspaper stories about good and evil. It embraces all things in a deeper unity. It is resting in the peace that Christians call the Will of God. Lent is a pilgrimage into the heart of nonduality.