Don't give up nothing this Lent: in the middle of the desert, says Father Paul Boudreau, there's nothing to drown out the presence of God. Because most of us don't do 40 days in the desert, we instead give up things for Lent.

There's a woman in our parish who gives up coffee for Lent every year. I don't know how she does it. I'd rather walk around for 40 days with a stick in my eye. Besides, what would be the point? Come Ash Thursday morning I'd be down at the Dew-or-Die Donut putting away a double-shot latte. I mean, why torture myself? Last year I tried giving up chocolate chip cookies and where did that get me? A middle-aged man in chocolate chip cookie withdrawal is not a pretty sight. Halfway through the second week, my give-up gave up and I folded like a cheap suitcase. Somehow the salvation of my immortal soul just doesn't seem important when I'm elbow deep in a bag of Chips Ahoy.

But not this Lent. No siree. No bailing out of the give-ups for me. This time I've got the magic formula, the silver bullet of self-discipline. For Lent 2002 I will give up beets and I'll make it stick. No beet will touch my lips for six weeks, I swear. I can feel the spiritual power surging within me already. Stand back, sons of Zebedee! The right-hand sea is mine.

Where does this give-up-something-for-Lent deal come from anyway? Why on earth have we, since our youth, joined in the sometimes futile, sometimes thriumphant seasonal exercise in wanting, but not having? A look at the gospel for the First Sunday of Lent this year might give us a hint.

Jesus is led by the Spirit into the dessert, and he fasts for 40 days and nights. An arid, wild wasteland void of anything man-made, the desert is a great place to give up stuff. Position yourself correctly in the desert and the only input you will get, the only sights, sounds, and smells you'll experience are those directly created by God. There is no "noise" of the material world out there. There are no cars, no people, no playgrounds, no telephones or televisions, no computers, no food, no water, no nada--just you and God.

At the north end of Death Valley in California, a nasty dirt track starts out the Ubehebe (pronounced YOO-ba-HEE-bee) crater off the main road near Scotty's Castle and rises for 26 miles through the Cottonwood Mountains to Tea-kettle Junction, a pass at a little over 4,000 feet. Then it drops into a place called Racetrack Valley where there is a vast playa. A playa is a dry lake where water used to be but has long ago dried up, leaving behind a perfectly flat, smooth surface made of hardened clay the consistency of concrete. Nothing grows there. The playa in Racetrack Valley is a 3-mile wide beige floor unbroken by anything living. I travel the rocky trail on a hot day, the only kind you get in Death Valley, but I am anxious to be out on the playa. They say you can meet God there.

Standing alone at the center of the ancient lake I notice a strange feeling, but I'm not sure what it is at first. It takes a while to dawn on me: What I am experiencing is nothing. There is nothing happening. The world around me is a two-tone tan and blue without any movement or sound whatsoever. Creation seems on hold. There are no birds, no insects. Nothing stirs. Not even a blade of grass grows to give purchase to the wind that blows so gently that it barely lifts the hair from my forehead.

Silence can be deafening. It looms; it engulfs you and swallows you like a giant amoeba. You can feel it thicken over your face and billow around you like foam, insulating you from what you think the world is supposed to sound like. Silence is a shock to your system.

There always seems to be a background to the world, a constant noise that lends a whir and rumble to life, an inconspicuous clamor of little things that somehow comforts us and reassures us that something is happening and, perhaps, that we are not alone. It also distracts us. I remember traveling with a friend whose first task upon entering our night's lodging was to turn on the radio. He said he just liked to have it on. I wonder if the need to have something "on" doesn't arise from a fear of what would happen if we turned everything off.

Out on the playa that day it all got turned off and I found out what was left when all else ceased: I was alone with the Lord. God, you see, is antithetical to what and who we are. God is God and we are us. There is nothing so totally opposite from us, so completely "other" than God. God is creator, we are creature. God is perfect, we are not. The great mystery and miracle of the Incarnation is that these opposites, God and humanity, become one in Christ. But in the ordinary of life the difference is there. That is why Jesus presented the kingdom of God as a paradox in which the last are first and the first are last; the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dead rise, sinners are saints, and the virgin is the mother! The opposites of existence are made one in the mystery of God's reign.

So, if I seek an experience of God in the ordinary, I find it in the opposites, the extreme other side of life's coin. For example, the human experience of the sound of God's voice would be perceived in my hearing as silence. God's presence would be felt in me as solitude. And God's appearance would be darkness, or the monochrome emptiness of the desert sky.

People ask me sometimes why God appeared to Abraham and Moses in the Bible but does not appear to us. My guess is that if we did what Abraham and Moses did--go to the desert and hang out there for, say, 50 years or so--we'd see God just fine. God is always near to us, appearing to us, speaking to us. The problem is that we're always looking for something else, seeking sounds and sights and experiences of the world that drown out the gentle evidence of God's presence.

But in the middle of the playa, there's nothing but you and God. God's face appears in brown and blue; God's presence is felt in the overwhelming solitude; and God's voice is heard in the deep, unyielding silence.

It's like Eucharist. To the senses, our holy communion with God is simply a meal of bread and wine, nothing more. But in faith we believe it to be God really present to us and in us. Now that's a lot to swallow, but we seem to do it quite easily. It is the ordinary practice of our faith.

The same is true for the desert. To my senses the desert is empty, featureless, silent. But in faith I experience God in communion with me. Like aspirin that I take not knowing how it works, so it is that somehow I am seeing and hearing God.

Because most of us don't do 40 days in the desert, we give up things for Lent. Although I have to admit, giving up beets isn't exactly heroic self-discipline. For my whole life I've had a hate-hate relationship with beets. I never liked them as a kid. My mother's cooking was bad enough; beets just made it worse.

During my stint in the Marines I was once made to serve beets in the chow line. I don't think the other guys liked beets any more than I did because I wasn't getting many takers. But the sergeant insisted that I plop those suckers onto each and every tray, even over vehement objections. Now, in a Marine Corps chow line you can take anything you want, but you have to eat what you take. So I wasn't making any friends serving the beets.

Then it was my turn to go through the line, and when I came to the beets I naturally passed them up. The sergeant was there, however, and made me take a whole pile of them. On my plate I made sure they didn't touch the chipped beef on toast, but when it was time to leave, I had to figure out a way to smuggle the beets past the sergeant while showing an empty tray. Marine utility trousers have ample pockets, so I stuffed one full of the little red buggers. It almost worked.

Two steps away from freedom, I heard the sergeant's voice: "Hold on there, private. What have we here?" He poked at my pocket with his riding crop, something he'd carried to work every day since seeing Jack Webb in The D.I., then jammed it deep inside and stirred it around, turning my contraband to mush. Deep crimson stains began spreading down my trouser leg. "What is this, private?" he asked again, stirring some more.

"Sir, it's beets, sir," I replied.

"What's that, private? I can't HEAR you?"

"SIR, IT'S BEETS, SIR," I said again, this time yelling as loud as I could, as was the custom.

"Well then you'd better EAT those beets, private," he commanded me. "You can't kill the enemy on an empty stomach."

So I ate the beets. My hands were red for a week and it was the last time I ever touched the hateful things.

Basically we give up things for Lent in order to join with Jesus in this cosmic encounter of God and humanity. It's a practice of self-denial. In Jesus' case he denies himself in his divinity so that he can encounter our humanity. It's the ol' Philippians 2 deal, Palm Sunday's second reading:

   Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as
   something to be exploited. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a
   slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he
   humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a
   cross (Philippians 2:6-8).

In our case we deny ourselves in our humanity so that we can encounter his divinity. It's a beneficial arrangement, if you look at it from our perspective. We get saved but, of course, Jesus gets crucified. Even in suffering and dying, though, Jesus rises and ascends to glory.

We still embrace the crucifix, the image of Jesus suffering and dying on the cross, as the central symbol of our faith. We could choose something a little more upbeat. The Second Sunday of Lent, for instance, presents the image of Jesus transfigured. That would be a nice representation of the Lord to hang on our walls. It would lend itself particularly well to modern light-up technology. We could have beams of light radiating from his clothing like the rotating reflectors in those fake fireplaces.

Other images of Jesus come to mind: Jesus the Good Shepherd, Jesus walking on the water, Jesus feeding the multitudes, Jesus sleeping peacefully in the boat. Then there's the one we use a lot of him floating in the air above the altar with his arms outstretched in welcome and his garment sweeping around him attractively.

But they all give way to the crucifix. Perhaps it is because the crucifix, the image of Jesus suffering and dying, speaks to our human hearts in a way none of the others can.

I remember my dad dying for three years in a nursing home, completely ruined by some unspecified cerebral vascular disorder. Sitting with him during his struggle and pondering the man who was my father, I was perhaps looking at my own self. For that was how his father died and, I supposed, that would be how I would die as well.

Sooner or later we all will suffer and die. And in the Paschal Mystery, Jesus suffers and dies with us. Jesus fully embraces our humanity so that we might have a full share in his divinity. But that divinity is hidden in our human weakness. That is why we confess our sins, for unseen in the darkness of sin shines the light of God's mercy and forgiveness. That is also why we anoint our sick and dying, so that they may become for us a "real presence" of Christ, an outward sign of the Anointed One who dwells among us and within us in our suffering and in our dying.

So giving up something for Lent is a kind of "little" suffering and death, a way of practicing our faith. Jesus said:

   If you want to become my follower, you must deny yourself, take up your
   cross and follow me. If you want to save your life, you will lose it. But
   if you give up your life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, you
   will find it. What would it profit you to gain the whole world and lose
   your own life in the process? (Mark 8:34-36)

Now that I think of it, maybe giving up beets for Lent isn't what I really need to be doing. Maybe I need to take a step up here. Maybe I should give up the arrogance and pride that places myself above others. I ought to forget about that new computer I was thinking of buying and instead write a decent check for the Rice Bowl. I should drop my protective guard a little more when I'm around others and let them get a little closer to me so I can find out what it's like to live the communion I celebrate. I ought to give up living for this world, which is passing away, and plunge myself more deeply into the Paschal Mystery of Christ's suffering and death and invest myself more fully in the kingdom of God, for it is surely coming and it will endure forever.

FATHER PAUL BOUDREAU is a priest of the Diocese of Norwich, author of Between Sundays: Daily Gospel Reflections and Prayers (Twenty-Third Publications, 2001), and a regular columnist for Today's Parish magazine.