I have written before about the pace of contemporary life. I watch as families fill their days and nights with all kinds of schedule demands. We’ve had many years, now, of most adults having work outside of the home. Mothers have always worked, and the work of being a mother is significant, but our society now has the expectation that women as well as men have jobs that produce income for families. Add to that busy pace the increased and increasing expectations that children be involved in organized activities - in part caused by the simple fact that there is often no adult at home during the day - and the schedules begin to get complex.

Filling up the time when children are awake but not in school usually involves a lot of different activities, many of which require extra practices and significant investments of time not only for the children, but also for their parents, who race from work to serve as a coach or chaperone at their children’s activities.

It is frustrating, and sometimes amusing, to schedule events and activities at the church. Our congregation is starting to adjust to busy families and children who are not able to be in worship every week. We’ve learned to understand that soccer games and out of town tournaments and sheer exhaustion are all parts of those busy lives and there are some Sundays when families just don’t make it to church. We have also learned that our families with children often don’t have extra time for committee meetings and other administrative chores. There is incredible leadership among our younger adults, but it is not always expressed in the usual meetings and planning sessions. For many families one trip to the church each week is all they can manage. We tend to schedule more activities and meetings adjacent to our regular Sunday worship services in order to respond to the needs of the families and the result is that sometimes Sunday mornings are hectic with meetings and classes and activities that might otherwise have been offered on other days.

Our teens frequently do not know their own schedules. Despite that they all have smart phones with excellent calendar applications, they often are not the managers of their own schedules. They defer to their parents’ well-honed sense of organization. By the time children become teens, one or both parents have become very efficient at managing multiple schedules at the same time. As a result, we ask teens when we might have a specific activity and then have to check with parents because the teen will say, “Yes! That’s a good time.” Then on the day of the activity, the teen will be elsewhere doing something else. As I said, it is frustrating and sometimes amusing.

There is, however, at least one societal event that breaks through all of the schedules and busy activities. When death occurs in a family, they have no choice but to drop everything and take time to grieve. It is often tragic when these events come to the lives of young people. Even if the family death is a grandparent or elder who had lived a long life, it is a totally new and unique situation for the youth. We have families in our church with children who have become adults, parents who have made it to their fifties and yet there has never been a death in the immediate family. The grandparents are still alive.

Grief and loss are major disrupting life events and they often catch families unprepared. We are not practiced at facing the reality of our mortality.

Lent gives us the opportunity every year to take a look at the simple fact that grief and death are real parts of our human reality. Rather than treating death and grief as enemies and strangers, our faith is honest about our human condition. The story of the death of Jesus is a central tenet of our faith. Mark’s Gospel, especially, seems to focus on telling that story.

Knowing that grief and loss will come to every person in our community, it just makes sense to take some time each year for a little bit of practice for those inevitable events. One way to practice is to set aside a bit of time for sabbath in each week. We try to offer meaningful experiences for our congregation of how they might invest a bit of time going slower. This year we are adding a weekly contemplative service. During Holy Week we offer opportunities for worship every day. We are careful to offer these as options and gifts, not as requirements, however. For some people, having one more thing to do will break the schedule, making life more hectic, not more peaceful. For others, however, taking time to turn off the electronic devices, to sit quietly, and to breathe deeply is a much-appreciated gift.

I frequently am allowed to witness and participate in family events when a death occurs. The family takes a week, and sometimes more, away from work and their normal hectic schedules. They have more time together. They eat more meals together. They sometimes just sit and share the space together. Often the television and the computer and the tablets and smartphones are turned off or set aside for a little while. The present and often painful reality of the moment gets their full attention. Just being fully present and paying attention in the moment is becoming rare in our time. When I am meeting with a family to plan a funeral we all share a common focus.

In our corner of the Christian church, we don’t focus too much on giving up things for Lent. But I hope that we have helped our people to learn to make a little space for lent. Rather than denying oneself pleasure or a food that is enjoyed, we invite people to give themselves a gift of quiet reflection and focused attention on God’s action in their lives.

Today is the first of the six Sundays of Lent. May each week of this season give our people time and space to reflect.

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