Plenty of Leeway on Lent

Does anybody do Lent anymore?

The question shot across the desk like a fast command to a slow computer. It took time to access that file.

Do Lent, as in do lunch, or do the Costa Brava?

Not found. See dictionary, under tool bar.

Lent, from the German for “spring,” implies the lengthening of days. For the 200 million Christians in the country familiar with the church calendar year, Lent defines the 40 weekdays before Easter. The season starts today, Ash Wednesday. For Eastern Orthodox churches it begins Feb. 22, a day of fasting and prayer known as Clean Monday.

Ask people what they do in the long weeks leading to Easter, and the answers are a tribute to creative thinking. Some say Lent is a time for giving. They might write a letter to a loved one each week. Others say it is for giving up a habit--gossip and TV watching are on a lot of lists this year.

For everyone who looks forward to slowing down and leaving time to take stock of his or her life, someone else wonders what it’s all about and admits to just going through the motions.

At the heart of it, Lent is a season of repentance and renewal. The most community-minded observers are the churches with the most elaborate and traditional liturgies. Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran congregations, in particular, make Lent a church-based season.

The first sign that the 40 days have started are ashes smeared on foreheads during Ash Wednesday services held by many Christian churches. All through the season religious expressions smolder with drama. From the Stations of the Cross and the “Passion Play” to a mourners’ procession on Good Friday in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Lent’s theatrical devotions relive the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. At the end of it, Easter’s midnight Mass reaches operatic proportions. Incense, chants and the baptism of new church members take the Easter vigil to Wagnerian pitch. Mass can last more than three hours.

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Other Christian communities approach Lent as a time of personal, private reflection.

“In the Baptist church, Lent is all about me and Jesus,” says Melinda Munoz, a licensed Southern Baptist minister who lives in Los Angeles. Seventh Day Adventists play it down to avoid all commercial overtones.

Anne Strasburg, an Episcopalian, has always observed the season but sometimes changes her approach. For 15 years, social service was the heart of her life during Lent--working in a soup kitchen or on the board of an AIDS service center--as a member of All Saints Episcopal church in Pasadena.

“But I believe in fallow periods too,” says Strasburg, who is not a member of a congregation now. This year she will rise before dawn during Lent to look at paintings of saints and read their stories. “There’s a childlike quality about it,” she says. She is also reading parables from the New Testament gospels because she finds useful advice in them.

“I behave a little better when I remember what the parables say,” she says.

Strasburg is a film producer who tends to get frenetic.

“Lent is for reorienting myself, to be more calm and to listen better,” she says.

Nikolaos Stefanidis is another social activist who uses Lent to intensify his efforts. A psychologist who works with adolescents, Stefanidis spends Thursday nights counseling homeless teens on Hollywood Boulevard.

“Go out to the streets, and you have something to compare your life to,” he says. “It puts your mishaps into proportion. It makes me think that maybe I should stop to thank God more often.”

Stefanidis, 44, watches out for the runaways on the boulevard all year.

“Lent magnifies their plight,” he says. “I’m more aware of how they are waiting for a resurrection, some kind of reprieve, every day.”

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Lenten services at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral inspire Stefanidis to keep going, he says, especially the final Holy Week services.

“They feed me,” he says.

For some people, Lent is a time of religious conversion. Many churches baptize new members at Easter. Beyond that, people who left religion behind often return at this time of year.

Robert Gonzalez, 35, was baptized as a baby but stepped back from the church as an adult. Six years ago on Ash Wednesday, he returned. The first year he gave up alcohol and drugs. Since then, he has stopped smoking and even cussing.

“I used to dread Lent but now I look forward to it,” says Gonzalez, a maintenance man and member of St. Clement Catholic Church in Venice.

“I still crave alcohol and drink beer on and off,” he says. But he’s giving it up for Lent this year. Experience has taught him how it works. “If I put in 10%, God will put in 90%.” The time he used to spend drinking a beer is now for prayer. His prayers are “for the people with problems who don’t know where to turn,” he says.

Artists see things their own way. Laura Lasworth, a 46-year-old painter, considers Lent a time of stark beauty. Baptized but not raised in any church, Lasworth joined Holy Family Catholic Church in South Pasadena about 10 years ago. She was captured by the effect of Holy Week when statues are shrouded in purple, the altar is stripped of its candles and cloths, the baptismal font is drained of blessed water.

“The shock of being without things we usually take for granted has meaning to me,” she says.

By the time Lent’s final drama unfolds, Lasworth will have spent the season reading the “Sermon on the Mount” in the Gospel of Matthew every day. A collection of blessings on those who live a virtuous life, “the passage speaks to every possible way of being self-involved and offers a contrary way to live,” Lasworth says. “If I read something every day, it has a profound effect on memory and helps me break habits.”

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At St. James Episcopal School in Los Angeles, Jared Bell and Kate O’Reilly-Jones, both 11 and in the sixth grade, are still new to this. Like many adults, they are not sure what to make of it.

Jared learned about the essence of Lent in school two years ago.

“It means the time when Jesus lived and died,” he says. “This year I’ll probably try to think more about what Jesus went through.” That, and give up candy.

Kate wonders whether Lent was more important a long time ago.

“People are doing a lot of other stuff now,” she says. “Lent is supposed to be important, but it seems as if we do it because we’ve always done it.”

Still, if anyone asked her, and he or she were a baptized Christian, she would advise the person to observe the season.

“If you’re not very close to God, you can get closer,” she says.

Praying in her room would help her get closer. Going to church every Sunday without once falling asleep could help.

“I might give up cookies,” she adds.