Lent can be way too serious

Once on a weekend women's retreat, we did one of those personality tests where you answer a bunch of questions and use your score to find out what kind of person you are. I don't remember which particular method this test was, but it involved four quadrants. I remember that the left two quadrants were "people-oriented" and the right two quadrants were "task-oriented." Up until this point I think I would have envisioned myself as more people-oriented than task-oriented. However, there were scenarios such as: when you go to a co-worker's office, do you ask about their family and what they did on the weekend, or do you ask a job-related question, get the answer and leave? I'm always a little borderline on these sorts of tests, but it was very clear that I was task-oriented and *not* people-oriented.

I was really pretty disappointed to find out that I was not people-oriented. I would like to be good with people. I try to imagine that my task orientation is related to what my gifts are, although I'm always hard-pressed to name what those might be. I still don't do people well (once when I heard someone asked what they were most afraid of, I allowed that I am afraid of people).

In spite of being task-oriented, I've never been the sort of person who has a dream, or a goal. I barely have a career. Having children gave me lots to do for quite a few years, so there wasn't always a lot of time to think about it, although I had several other "fantasy" jobs that seemed like they would be a lot more fulfulling than what I was doing. I spent many years doing jobs that I had more or less fallen into as opposed to really seeking out (which is probably not all that unusual).

I'm sure you've had the experience where you hear or read a certain idea multiple times within a relatively short time span and think, I'm sensing a theme here. I've had a sort of theme trying to establish itself lately, and it is sort of a two-parter.

Part one has to do with your attitude about life in general. In the prayer this Sunday one of my favorite verses was quoted: this is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. Look forward to what today will bring. Expect to find joy and blessing. Now in general I would always say that I am blessed, and I try to find a little joy here and there, but I have more of a tendency to treat each day as something to be navigated, sixteen more hours to get through. Each day is much like another, with the occasional brief moment of beauty or laughter. So part one of the theme is something of a stretch for me.

Part two is even more of a stretch, it has to do with people. It has to do with being a blessing to other people. One thing I read this week was this excerpt of an interview Bill Moyers did with author Karen Armstrong. It was just one of numerous things I've heard in recent weeks about having compassion and loving others. Trying to view each person you encounter from their own context, to enable you to have compassion and to view that person as someone loved by God.

On one hand, I know that small simple things you don't even think much about can have an impact on someone else, so it is not always about how well you do in the large. On the other hand, I also know when we adjust our attitudes in favor of others we wind up helping ourselves just as much, if not more. I'd like to say I'm signing up, but for now I'm just putting it in print.