The season of Lent is a good time to examine ourselves as we experience the tensions of being human, being mortal, but awaiting the effect of the resurrection of Easter to make us beings in-dwelt by eternity. In this in-between we must humbly reckon with what we are in order that we might hope to become what we will be. We must look honestly at ourselves to long all the more for what we shall be and to invite the "shall be" into the present. So the idea of this painting is fascinating to me. What would my self-portrait look like? How would I depict myself? Sometime ago I came across the idea of the FAE, the fundamental attribution error. This the propensity to excuse in myself what I condemn in others. Someone trips on the sidewalk and I consider them clumsy, I trip on the sidewalk and I mutter about the poor workmanship of those who built it with such unevenness that would cause a trip hazard! Or morally I excuse as understandable, as just a little slip up, that which I judge in others to be a pretty major moral failure. My Lenten self portrait should be accurate. So for some that means challenging the FAE. For some it means looking with new eyes at the "shall be" that is wondrously forming in light of Easter For some it means seeing the beauty and value of the one who is depicted but hadn't yet been admired and now notices behind her shoulder a Father who calls her beautiful.
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