Discernment is the heart of Lent: A challenge from the Desert Elders

A lone tree, thriving in the desert. Photo: Rabah Al Shammary via unsplash

Lent is a season for reflection on the self. I never really understood or appreciated it until I became old enough to doubt my self-knowledge and then began reading works of monastic spirituality.

As a religious, half-heartedly fundamentalist college student, I labored under the illusion that the most important thing in life was to discover the correct beliefs about God. I have abandoned this fruitless search for correct belief in part because I discovered it was an endless rabbit hole disguised as a wise search for truth. But I have kept part of it: the seeking.

“... the desire for God requires the discovery not of the truth about God, but of the truth about one’s self.”

And what I have found in the process is that the desire for God, the desire to live the good life, requires the discovery not of the truth about God, but of the truth about one’s self. I do not mean navel-gazing, but rather honest encounter with o…