Remember the mending basket? We used to stuff things into it: the shirt that needed a button, the pants with a ripped seam, the sock with a hole in the toe. It has probably become a sad relic by now—who has time to darn? The ripped pants get tossed in the Good Will bag, and the button is lost at the bottom of the closet. But the mending basket still works as a metaphor for Lent. During this season we look at relationships in disrepair, gaps and fissures in the fabric of our lives, embarrassing failures we avoid the rest of the year.

Our initial reaction to both mending and Lent might be “ugh.” Few people want to devote their limited energies to something that sounds depressing and outmoded. Perhaps we have followed the practices of earlier centuries too long, wondering vaguely why eating shrimp and lobster is penitential. It’s time to adapt our Lenten practices to our era, when for many North Americans the problem is not a scarcity of meat and dairy products but an overabundance.

If we think of mending and Lent as restoring an original beauty, both will have more appeal. Think of polishing a dull surface to a shiny finish. Everyone who’s ever had an aching tooth filled or a painful disease cured knows the relief of returning to health. Anyone who’s ever loved knows the joy of reuniting after an absence or the sense of rightness when harmony is restored after an argument.

When we were born, God had a dream for us. As adults, we marvel at the silky wisps of hair, satiny skin, and deep eyes of a newborn infant, forgetting that we were once that way. How can we return to being that human creature in whom God takes delight? We can begin by looking at four different areas, like four items pulled from the mending basket.

How often we miss the beauty of creation: the salmon tinge of sunset, the rustle of branches in the wind, the shimmering of sun on water, the grace of a bird’s flight. Many people yawn and think, How ordinary. But the truly enlightened know how to find God’s presence in the world God made. When we receive a wonderful gift from a person we love, we explore it, treasure it, take it out often, and wear or admire it. God gives us a magnificent world each day, yet how often do we look for the Creator’s hand prints there.

Learning to be fully attentive, the poet Carl Sandburg trained himself to experience sunsets differently than other people do. The artist Georgia O’Keeffe observed in awe how a drop of dew ran into the center of a corn plant, forming a little lake. She would watch a lightning storm rapt and reverent. G. K. Chesterton wrote: “I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud.” While we aren’t all poets, artists, or authors, we can still focus throughout Lent on the beauty of God’s creation. How much more appreciative we might become by Easter!

Some leaders encourage us to see all the world’s peoples as potential terrorists. By curtailing civil liberties and heightening security, they seem to perpetuate dread. A healthier motto is that of the Dominicans, who before the war began last spring proclaimed, “We have family in Iraq.” If we are truly “catholic,” our bonds to the human family are strong despite the propaganda of fear. Maybe Lent is the time to get a library book or video about those labeled as enemies. Most of us could learn more about Islam or increase our knowledge of Afghanistan’s history. And in doing so, our compassion might deepen.