Episcopal Relief & Development’s 2025 LENTEN Meditation Journey . . . A COMMONPLACE Lent

Holiness…has something to do with being who we are, claiming our truths, opening our hearts, giving ourselves to the other pure and unglossed.
—Sr. Joan Chittester, The Rule of Benedict

Once, during a tough season, my therapist introduced me to a nervous system regulating concept called the Window of Tolerance. As I understand it, the idea of the Window of Tolerance is very similar to what I call “margin” and what some folk call “emotional bandwidth.” It is a way to talk about our capacity for handling everyday challenges depending on the other stresses, trauma or trauma triggers we are experiencing. Sometimes, our windows are wide open, and we can handle all the big and little common challenges that come our way, and other times, as stress or trauma
increases, our windows begin to close, the opening becoming more and more narrow.

During one of my own almost-closed-window seasons, I took a trip home to Arkansas, a trip during which I moved every few nights, visiting as many friends and family members as I could. A different level of intimacy happens when you cohabitate with loved ones, even for a few days. You see each other with bedhead, share bathrooms, argue over thermostats and stay up until it’s too late to suffer pretense. Here, in this closer-than normal state, everyone crosses some sort of time and space continuum that results in a different kind of knowing—a knowing that offers the opportunity to see and accept each other exactly as we are, giving ourselves, unglossed, bedhead and all, to each other.

It is a knowing that provides emotional safety, helping us open our windows of tolerance just a bit wider as we remember we are not alone and are loved as we are. This kind of emotional safety is part of what Episcopal Relief & Development is doing with their early childhood development programs, helping parents open their own windows of tolerance wider and wider to better provide the nurturing care children need.

For REFLECTION:

What helps you give yourself to others, unglossed and honest, in who you are?

Click here to read the introduction to the 2025 Lenten Meditation “A Commonplace Lent.”

The Lenten Meditations prepared by Episcopal Relief & Development invite readers to deepen their spiritual practice during the season of Lent, the time of preparation leading to Easter. Our 2025 meditations explore the idea of “A Commonplace Lent.” This concept reflects Episcopal Relief & Development’s tagline: “Working Together for Lasting Change.” We share in common the work of advancing lasting change in communities impacted by injustice, poverty, disaster and climate change.

We also share in common spiritual practices that strengthen our faith—prayer, worship, love, grace, service and so much more. The author explores another meaning of common in the  meditations: finding God in the common and ordinary as well as in the extraordinary mountain-top moments. Each day begins with wisdom from desert mothers and fathers, monastics and other spiritual leaders who offer insight into our common path of faithful discipleship and service. Each meditation concludes with a question for deeper reflection.

Episcopal Relief & Development is the compassionate response of The Episcopal Church to human suffering in the world. Hearing God’s call to seek and serve Christ in all persons and to respect the dignity of every human being, Episcopal Relief & Development serves to bring together the generosity of Episcopalians and others with the needs of the world.

This Lenten Meditation Journey is provided courtesy of Episcopal Relief & Development and was authored by Jerusalem Jackson Greer, co-executive director and agrarian minister for the Procter Center, an Episcopal farm, camp and retreat center in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio. As former manager of evangelism and discipleship for The Episcopal Church under Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, she co-founded the Good News Garden movement and oversaw Way of Love and Evangelism initiatives for the wider church.