Lent day 47-48: Easter!

48 comics later, I have concluded my Lent project for 2022. After making a series of comics on the Stations of the Cross and dealing with my dad's death last year, it felt like a good idea to take a step back and make something that is more of a contemplation of life rather than death. It seemed fun to take on a paradoxical prayer journey through Lent this year because everything has been so heavy for the last few years. Everything still is heavy. 

I have to get out of the survival, trudging mode and accept that this is what life is, and there has to be a better way to bear these burdens than solemnity or self-gratification or apathy. 

Something that has been monumental this season for me has been Robert Ellsberg's "The Saints' Guide to Happiness". I led my students through it during Spiritual Formation. It is an exploration of how traditional Saints such as St. Antony, St. Francis of Assisi, or St. Teresa of Avila as well as more contemporary saints such as Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, or Flannery O'Connor navigated life, work, suffering, or death to find joy, peace, and purpose in God. Sounds very mystical, and that is a part of it, but what Ellsberg has created is very thoughtful and rather practical. 

It has helped me to cultivate some helpful habits that I think have shown fruit in these comics.

Lent day 43-46

The end of my Lenten comics. Thank you for reading.

Lent day 39-42

Lent day 35-38

Lent day 31-34

Some quiet little comics.

Lent day 27-30

Lent day 23-26

Lent day 20-22

Continuing this weird little journey through Lent…

Lent day 17-19

Lent day 13-16

Please excuse these silly comics. I am really enjoying this.

Lent day 11-12

Some new comics in which I refer to J-Mac as a sour faced saint and battle neighborhood raccoons...

Ya know, reverent Lent stuff.

Lent day 7-10

Lent day 3-6

Catching up on some Lent comics.

My last project with the Stations of the Cross and reflecting on my dad’s death last year was so heavy and reverent, that I wanted to do this project as a bit of a detox where I could have fun with such a morose season.

So for Sunday’s scripture I thought it would be fun to draw a Medieval depiction of Satan because they’re so odd and weird. However, what I drew as a bit of a joke has actually turned out a bit terrifying. I sort of love how jarring it is from the stuff I normally make. So there’s probably going to be more where that came from.

Lent day 2

We have been compartmentalizing in order to function for so long, that I forget that all the things happening in and around us are related. Correlating with on another.

We are experiencing it all, setting it aside, doing our work, and carrying it all with us.

We cycle through shock, horror, anger, apathy, advocacy, fear, hope... What can we do but laugh?

Lent day 1: Ash Wednesday

Lent day 1: Ash Wednesday

I am gonna be honest. It has been a rough few years. Some really great things have happened. My kids are the coolest. My wife gets cooler all the time. I love my job. I am looking at getting trained in Spiritual Direction. Considering a PHD in peace studies.

But we have been dealing with COVID for some time. And the WAY in which people have chosen to deal with it, or rather to pretend it doesn't exist or isn't that bad, has been it's own sort of frustration. The death tolls are heavy. There have been shootings. A whole insurrection. Downplaying the insurrection. Wars. A possible European war is looming while folks in Ukraine try to resist a Russian invasion. 

My dad died a year ago this month. I watched my dad essentially starve to death over the course of a year with untreatable cancer. 

I think the season of Lent and Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, all of that, is a beautiful part of the church calendar. I love that the practice has evolved beyond the high liturgical church spaces into Baptist groups and non-denominational churches as well. It is a beautiful time for introspection into our own mortality. A wonderful self-examination of the role we play in the injustice we see in the world around us. To look at the log in our own eye. A stark reminder of the suffering of Jesus and the grace through which God sees us. 

But I am a bit done with reminders of death at the moment. People die by the thousands all around us. Some violently. Some cut off from loved ones in a pandemic. Some in the streets with no names or loved ones to care. Some get their faces painted in murals and given viral hashtags compelling us to fight and resist evil.

Some die in their own homes while their loved ones take care of them, leaving those loved ones broken and fractured.

I am sick and tired of ashes.

I want to say to Lent this year, "I get it. Enough." 

So yesterday, I decided to make a daily comic during the season of Lent. I am not fasting from anything. I am not reading anyone's Lent journals or signing up for their email devotional. 

I am just going to use this season to make some art. To reflect on what is beautiful in our state of impermanence. To reflect on the things that mock death by giving life. To reflect on the beautiful grace of Jesus amid ordinary, boring things like grading papers, watching Blippi for the thousandth time, packing lunches, mowing the grass, bragging about my Wordle guesses, and telling students to turn in their phones. 

So, in my non-denominational space, I am going to "mirth in the love of God" for Lent, as Richard Rolle said.

Feel free to read along. 

Lenten Comics day 40

STATION FOURTEEN

Jesus is Placed in the Tomb

Lenten Comics day 39

STATION THIRTEEN

Jesus Dies on the Cross

The death of Jesus on the cross means so many different things to so many different people. It often means several overlapping realities for just one person. I wanted to convey that here.

Jesus is all too human, overwhelmed by the political + religious powers. Cast out by the mob. Physically destroyed. Spiritually Jesus transcends those afflictions. They do nothing regarding the truth of his identity. The worldly systems of death (the ways we kill each other and practice injustice), the natural affliction of death, and the spiritual presence of darkness prevailed on the cross.

Jesus on the cross was an act of submission to the brokenness of the world. Jesus on the cross was an act of submission to God. It was also an act of invasion by the kingdom of God into our brokenness.

A man swallowed by chaos + injustice. A common event.

The Son of Man sacrificed as an offering of God’s love + restoration. A mythological event.

Jesus surrenders.

Lenten Comics day 38

STATIONS OF THE CROSS: Station Twelve 3/3

Lenten Comics day 37

STATIONS OF THE CROSS: Station Twelve 2/3

Lenten Comics day 36

STATION TWELVE

Jesus Speaks to His Mother + Disciple

Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

John 19:25-27 (NRSV)