Serendipities and Synchronicities

The Burning Bush plant

I finished my weekend of Group Spiritual Direction and returned to work today. My desire to be still and listen grew over the course of the weekend, but by 8:30 pm I had not considered any holy writing, mooring myself with 20 minutes of silent prayer around 6:30 am. I will end the day with the Examen and some journaling, but the weekend revealed the importance of *holy* words and images. . . 

Like the Wicked Witch of the West.

One of our group members used Oz as a metaphor, and when a secretary made the comment about being "the Wicked Witch of the West," I thought of her and said a prayer for her. The secretary has never used an Oz reference in the two years I've known her. It seemed somewhere on the spectrum of serendipity and synchronicity - important to pay attention to these.

Or maybe a mountain.

An image given to me involved climbing a mountain and being on a mountain, and tonight, the encouragement for lectio divina from the book I'm reading was Exodus 3:1-6, where Moses took the flock past the wilderness and to the mountain of God (Mt Horeb). I had not considered "my mountain" the "mountain of God," but any created thing has some origin in God, yes? (We can get into the 'did God create evil' question once I've slept for about 7.5 hours - but maybe not then either.) I pay attention to the coincidence.

How about a campfire. . .

. . .where the wood never burns up because somehow the flame perpetuates its own combustion and God's presence waits for someone to pay attention.

The detail of God "noticing Moses paying attention" and then calling out to Moses causes me to wonder if God was hanging out looking for conversation, and if anyone took a step to reach out in curiosity or amazement, God called out to him/her/them. What might God say to me if God notices I am paying attention? "Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you," as James writes (4:8). My impression from reading Scripture is God always looks to see if any of us are even trying to pay attention, because if we are, God will be there to reach back to us. 

Hope the week has started well.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Exodus 3:1-6

1 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Ancient Paths in New Shoes

This image is on many websites. I got it from this one.

Jeremiah 6: 16

"Thus says the Lord:

Stand at the crossroads, and look,

And ask for the ancient paths,

Where the good way lies;

And walk in it,

And find rest for your souls."

I found the link for the group spiritual direction (GSD) workshop in a school alumni e-mail. The Shalem Institute offers GSD workshops, and others like them, to train whomever feels so led to  do work in spiritual direction. They also serve as spaces of healing and refreshment regardless of the motive for signing up.

We held Jeremiah's words in the holy space of our circle today with the encouragement to see what stood out. While I did not feel particularly tired during the session, my emotions shouted at me with "and find rest for your souls." 

My life of late often leaves me exhausted at the end of the day. When I am "on" at work, the day more often than not follows me home, sometimes disrupting my sleep. With my time "off," the days grow as full, and I drift into dreams not realizing I fell asleep in the first place. 

Because I want to find this rest for my soul, I wonder who I "ask for the ancient paths." God, of course, but who else? I like the non-need for creativity or productivity inherent in the statement. I don't have to be a trailblazer, an inventor, a visionary - I simply need to have the humility to ask where it is I need to walk - the trail has already been blazed and from all reports - it is a "good way" to go.

Since it's the Bible and I align myself with Christianity, I totally read Jesus into it (though He would not be alive for hundreds of years). He journeyed the path before any of us, made sure the way was good and then set to telling people about it and walking along with them. 

Sometimes the ancient paths aren't rocket science, i.e., I'm exhausted, the ancient path equates to going to sleep, on time and with at least 9 hours before I need to be up; but other times we need a person or people to show us where the good way lies. 

In these moments, the Love of God comes to us through community and our ability to open our lives to the community and ask for the paths we need to find. . .because they are there, waiting for us to walk in them.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read through the passage at the top of the post after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Tree Hugging

Image from Save the Redwoods.org

My experience of Qigong consists of two events: A mid-afternoon practice during a group retreat at Penuel Ridge Retreat Center and then today, via Zoom, as prelude to an afternoon of group spiritual direction. The gentleman leading the movement took us through a practice which included the 4 elements. My imagination ignited with the wood element set as he instructed us to hug small trees and big trees in succession. I felt the soft, shaggy bark of our old cedar trees caress my cheek, then stared skyward in amazement as a great sequoia took its place, my arms toothpicks to its towering wonder. 

Then tonight, a full moon poured its shimmering light into the front yard, peek-a-booing with the cedars and pines, the redbuds and cherry and for a moment my teenaged self remembered staring at these same trees. The main road's traffic slowed considerably at night with the now-abundant housing developments years away from construction. The night grew still with the moon casting peace on the land, the stars whispering their reminders of our beginnings and our endings. The hush sounded in my busy mind and soul, and I could stand with the trees, intercepting the light, bathing in its glow and breathing in the expansiveness of the universe. 

As I "held" the sequoia this morning, I recognized while I might try to hold the sequoia, its enormity could not be held. It could fill my arms to overflowing a thousand (a million?) times over and still have more to give. 

God (and God is Love) is gargantuan in comparison to the width and height of the sequoias - all of them. Paul prays in Ephesians 3 for all of us to know the height, width, depth and length of Christ's Love and to experience this Love, so we may be filled to measure of ALL the FULLNESS of GOD (my emphasis, but really, it needs to be emphasized). We cannot get a hold on God, yet God offers to hold us and to fill us to the brim with Love (and I believe "overflowing with Love" is more God's goal). 

So go ahead and try to hold a sequoia, I think you'll find, as I did, your arms opened wide in praise.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Ephesians 3:14-21, NRSV

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family[b] in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16 I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. 18 I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21 to him be glory in the church and[c] in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Love Letter

♥️  

Dear J,

At this moment, I know you read these daily posts AND I know you are the only one who does so. This, too, is a metaphor for your love for me - showing up when no one else does, reaching out to me day-to-day again and again, cheering me on, believing in me, encouraging me to take the next step. Because of your abiding love, I experience God's Love and can trust it as I never could before we met. 

You have been my sounding board, my support, the one who funneled love to me as if the world is full of Love - and slowly through these years together, with the steady stream of your love to me, I feel love in my soul consistently and rest in Love in ways I have not been able to rest before you. 

On another late night, with too much to do and to little time to do it in, I find us laughing at exploding Coke cans in the pantry and your patience with cleaning up the mess once again. You tell me you are proud of me. You rub my shoulders, kiss my neck and wish me sweet dreams. 

This is our life together - as well as conspiring for crazy adventures, weeding the flower beds (again), chasing the little dog as he ventures to see "the girls," digging more holes for yet more plants, waking up ridiculously early to get our runs in, exclaiming at the overly complicated instructions for yet another not-Faster-Way-at-all meal, and loving all kinds of breads and desserts of our own making. And breakfasts, lots of breakfasts together with all the cream and coffee we can muster, outside ideally.

So this is my love letter to you - my dearest Love.

Listening in the Labyrinth

 

Chartres Cathedral and Labyrinth @40daywanderer

I walked our labyrinth today for the first time in weeks, and I immediately noticed the disarray of the rocks. When we constructed it 3 years ago (!), we took rocks from our property and the local creek to make the entrance/exit, parts of the paths and the lunations around the entirety of the path. We scraped down the dirt with the edge of a stone and wiggled it back and forth into the dirt until it stayed upright in the path, though the lunation rocks lay mainly flat. 

Occasionally, I find a rock on its side and as I walk, I resurrect it, but today, chaos reigned in the labyrinth. The garden stakes, acting as guides to the nautical rope and helping the rope maintain its course, raised themselves high as if considering a strike. The lunations on a quarter of the circumference lay strewn to one side or the other, sometimes obstructing the path or opening it to the vagaries of the back yard. The rocks normally standing at attention in the labyrinth's opening (and closing) prostrated themselves to the ground, many with mud, worms or ants already making homes in the newly found shelter. 

A gift of labyrinth walking presents itself in metaphor (yes, I meant to wordplay). For those who teach others how to walk the path, they encourage the walker to pay attention to what occurs during the walk, e.g., Scripture that comes to mind, what art/stain glass/music happens to be within eye/ear shot, does some event take place, etc. Once a butterfly stepping stone became of Word from God for me. Upon seeing the butterfly with wings made of chunks of broken tile and colored glass, God said (in a I-just-know-it-was-God-and-not-me-way), "Your brokenness will be your path to flight." At that very moment, the phrase became one of my life's mantras.

So today, with the plethora of discombobulation on the path, I pondered how it might be interpreted. At the time, I considered the day: Not a banner one - not enough sleep, sensing a deep desire to modify much of my life plan (read: crawl-out-of-my-skin-in-discomfort "deep desire") and a growing sense of dread for a project whose deadline looms (read: likely reason for my deep desire to modify my life plan). I kicked myself for any number of reasons, which eventually led to my assuming the metaphor of the "disarrayed path" somehow reminded me of the necessity to care for my spiritual life and my work life by taking one step at a time, repositioning/reordering the practices of my life and bit-by-bit getting everything back on course. A fair interpretation and not completely incorrect. . .

Then I engaged in a lectio divina practice tonight on Psalm 121 (posted below for your own practice, if you'd like to join in) and the phrase which stood out for me was "The LORD is [my] Keeper," keeping me from all evil, keeping my life, keeping my going out and my coming in forever more. Yes, I have the ability to exert some influence on the path I walk, but the LORD is my Keeper and the Keeper of my path - even when I knock all the rocks around and rip up the rope myself. This is Love doing what Love does - holding us all the days of our lives.

PRACTICE

Lectio Divina: Read the following passage through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Psalm 121

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
    from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;
    he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 He who keeps Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The Lord is your keeper;
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day
    nor the moon by night.

7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
    he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
    your going out and your coming in
    from this time on and forevermore.

Healing the Self

Saint Raphael: "God Heals"

 J asked me how I decided what to write day-to-day for the blog. So far, I said, I look for a theme of the day and then take it to the page and see what happens. Today's theme centered around types of self-care. 

While self-care echoes a previous post about self-love, one will participate in more fulfilling self-care if self-love has taken some root. Otherwise, the motivation to pay attention to the self's wants or needs seems selfish, maybe even curmudgeonly (I won't care for you because my needs are the only ones that matter.). And any self-doubt about self-care will reflect in those around you. I believe the phenomena occurs because of "mirror neurons" in our brain which fire congruently when someone else shares an emotion or action, and we "experience" feeling or doing the action. An example: When Julia Roberts dies in Steel Magnolias, and I cry like a baby with all the other characters. My brain knows the feelings of loss, and I feel them as readily as it appears the characters feel them.

Anyway, feeling selfish about an action toward self-care likely shows up on your face, in your posture, in your voice, and those around you then mirror your guilt back to you "verifying" you are selfish for getting the massage instead of taking the two hours to cook a meal for the family (or whatever scenario fits.).  Yet I digress.

J and I slept in today, and I luxuriated in the feeling of refreshment. We went for a run (caring for my body's health) and ate breakfast in the sun (a treat on any day). I finished a project for work (one less thing on the list!) and I spent time listening to two different speakers discuss various aspects of self-care. 

One took a deep dive into mindfulness where a key component maintains the absolute necessity of nonjudgmental appraisals of all of one's life. Continuing to accept all the positive and negative aspects of one's life nonjudgmentally, over time, creates more space for enjoying life and growing cognitive flexibility. Self-care here involves becoming intimately aware of one's self and one's thoughts; holding both without judgment; and in accepting the good/bad/ugly, one accepts herself/himself fully and can accept others more readily as well.

The second speaker spoke about her own journey to creative living which found her at the brink of a PhD (and a life of consistent predictability), but lacking enthusiasm. For her, she "did the scary thing" and pivoted into a program where she immediately recognized the concordance of her inner self with all she learned and with whom she studied. Her self-care was listening to the still small voice which told her all along to ditch the secure path and follow her instincts.

A book J bought me arrived today as well: The Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire. From reading thus far, the Spark's reclamation hinges on accepting culturally unacceptable feminine traits such as disagreeableness, desire, authority and shrewdness - traits we often judge in ourselves or other women as "improper" or "not nice." As the speaker tonight said, niceness will get you a long way, but it won't fulfill you (my paraphrase). 

Self-care ultimately grows out of an awareness of God's great Love - as I attune my ears to the still small voice within and all around me - as I experience God's Love of me exactly as I am with all the positives and all the negatives - I see God has formed all of me and says again, "You are my daughter in whom I am well pleased." 

Below is a passage for lectio divina. Read it through after a few deep breaths and pay attention to any word or phrase which sticks out for you. Read through again and pay attention to anything further you notice about the word/phrase and how it applies to you. Read through again and spend time in prayer with the word/phrase asking God what you need to understand/know/do with the word/phrase (i.e., How might God be guiding you? What needs your further action? Where may your understanding need to be changed or expanded? How may this impact your relationship with someone else?). End with a time of thanksgiving. 

Read Psalm 139: 13-18

13  For it was you who formed my inward parts;

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14  I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

that I know very well.

15  My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In your book were written

all the days that were formed for me,

when none of them as yet existed.

17  How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18I try to count them—they are more than the sand;

I come to the end—I am still with you.

Creating Space

A poem I wrote years ago had the line "hands never empty/heart never full" - an apt description of a life busy with activity and empty of soul - the action of life without the heart of it - or something like that.

After a full day, and weekend, of perpetual motion, the days' end left me exhausted. I took some moments to journal, but also to look-up the writing lecture series which led to reviewing a low-residency MFA which caused me to consider a new hire possibility at my job and eventually led me back to looking at the book I am working through about Centering Prayer and lectio divina.

The review of the low-residency MFA brought me to an article about the process of shaping a student in said MFA. Basically, the writer had been a previous professor at this program and discussed his process of guiding the students in their pursuit of nonfiction, which often translated as memoir. In essence, he said he created space for them to consider what they were "really" trying to say with whatever story they shared. Yes, questions made the walls, but not to keep the idea in, but to give it space to breath - pleasant boundary lines, as the psalmist might say, so the neighbor's conversation doesn't hijack your own.

Then in the book, the author speaks of space: The space created by breathing out, by being still when all the world pushes for movement, by sweeping out the constant ruminations of the mind so the grain of the soul may come into sharper relief.

Of all the spiritual practices which lead to God, I struggle with this the most. The granddaughter of a woman who survived The Great Depression and the daughter of a woman who majored in details, attaching a memory and feeling to each one; I hold on to anything which may be resurrected to a new life or which may someday remind me of the laughter I shared with J on a cold morning in February. 

What I've realized is the physical filling of space imitates mental and spiritual cluttered-ness as well. When I sit to be silent, the room in the inn lights the no vacancy sign, and Jesus must again find other lodging with someone who has some room to share.

While the hyperbole may indeed be overdone, the point remains - for any rearranging to occur, at least a little space is needed to shuffle the boxes around enough to get what isn't needed out the door. 

I guess the grace in all this is Love really can squeeze in between all the boxes in the first place and simply occupy the nanometers between surfaces if need be. My experience teaches me the veracity of this statement as well as the truth of Love rearranging all the furniture in the house in a heart's beat - wanted or not. Fortunately, the majority of the time, Love gently calls from every corner and provides whatever "umph" I need to get me to the room to begin the process of creating space, so my life - my soul - may be "filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." 

And often the desire to create space is all that's needed to do so. Thanks be to God.

Photo credit of a Tokonoma: https://japanobjects.com/features/japanese-tea-house

Finding Surrender

Painting by Anasthasia Tan

Maybe one of the practices of Lent needs to include the practice of figuring out how a day wholly consumed by anything but personal reflection may also be called a Lenten practice.

I woke early to shower and pack for my 1.5 hour drive to a weekend gig for work. I spent the day talking with people about their hang ups and heartaches, and I spoke with people who loved the people with the hang ups and heartaches and others who cared for them. Before all was said and done, I had spent 12-13 hours interacting with, discussing, considering the stories of others and how their stories intersected with the stories of those who love them.

More often than not, the primary person - the focus of my attention - shared a completely different story than the one who loves them. The one loving her or him clueless to the hurt and heartache, astounded by what s/he heard. 

Now I sit here considering how this day may inform a Lenten practice or be one in itself. 

Maybe the lesson is more about surrender: Surrendering a day to engage others, a person's willingness to surrender his or her story to me, surrendering how I thought a day may unfold to how it actually did unfold, surrendering to someone else's truth even if it conflicts with one's own understanding. . .

And that is the Lenten practice - surrender - both a giving up and an opening up entwined in perpetual reaching toward the Mystery.

And Love?

I'd say when it gives life, it is a mutual surrender. I to my Beloved and my Beloved to me. 

Beyond that, I'd need to be more rested to speculate, so until Monday (Sundays don't "count" in Lent). . .good night.

The Calling

Original Artwork from Psalm Prayers; one of my favorite modern icon artists.*

Since the beginning of the year, I have engaged in the spiritual practice of Examen. St. Ignatius is said to have had the Jesuit monks in his care engage in the practice midday and in the evening. Two basic steps comprise the totality of the practice: naming a "consolation" of the day and naming a "desolation." Practitioners expand the steps to include a moment of centering breath prior to engaging in the day's review and a prayer of thanksgiving at the end for whatever consoles or desolates on any given day.

The brevity of the exercise belies its impact on day-to-day life. Within a month, I recognized my own penchant toward pessimism completely out of proportion to the consolations of the day. Granted I listed more than just one consolation or desolation of the day, at least initially, and the collected data of the first month helped me realize the part I played in desolating myself with my attitude, presumptions, preoccupations or fears.

For Lent, I found a book at my place of worship, Sacred Breath: Forty Days of Centering Prayer, by J. David Muyskens, and I have spent all of two days refreshing my short-lived practice of Centering Prayer and lectio divina. Today, the scripture passage came from 1 Samuel when Samuel, "did not yet know the LORD," but the LORD "came and stood there, calling as before." 

The two, well three, practices above begin with the premise God is here in this moment - as well as all the moments before and all the moments after. And by nature of being God, God calls to us in the midst of our lives, the consolations and the desolations - maybe asking us if we "yet know the LORD." 

And if the answer is "No," the promise remains we can know the LORD - even more - God wants to be known and is calling to us in order to be known. 

And when God is known, Love is known - in the midst of every heartache and every triumph. May we hearing the calling.

*Additional website: kregyingst.com or @psalmprayers

Mirrored Love

Found this photo at an Etsy retailer.

I grew up in a home where, when my mother asked my father to help her with the dishes, he answered, "You have daughters to do that." What man would do a "woman's work"?

Later, when I began considering ordination, my grandmother's beliefs about women "not teaching men (which definitely meant women could NEVER be ordained)" held me web-like as I took about 7 years to finally, truly believe God called me to ordained ministry. 

I still balk at "doing my hair and make-up" as basic chores I must do to appear professional, never mind the multiple sets of clothing I must have to do the same. My husband had 3 pairs of pants and about as many shirts for his professional wardrobe, doubtful anyone ever noticed the repetition.

I think about the above vignettes as my friend wrote to me to say she was dieting again because of gaining some weight back after losing some over the course of 18 months by painstaking abstinence of even the smallest "pleasures." Then, after receiving her resolution (I had invited her to have some dessert at my home.), I read an article in the local news from a woman who talked about the self-hatred women experience - particularly of their appearance, their bodies. Still later, I cleaned out some old professional publications with one entitled "Terminal Anorexia," illustrated with a skeletal thin female body - the ultimate picture of a societal paradigm of misogyny. . .

One of the hardest lessons in love I have had is looking in the mirror and telling myself, "I love you." 

Somehow, believing God loved me remained theoretical and giving my cognitive assent to the concept changed nothing. Yet, looking in a mirror and telling myself, "I love you," brought the matter right to the heart. I didn't love myself. I could barely look at myself at first because I felt ashamed, unworthy - too imperfect in too many ways. And if I felt unworthy of love, how in the world might I actually experience God's Love in my bones? 

I realized I couldn't. The Love had no power because I kept it at arm's distance - a nice idea with no transformational force because it flitted in my prefrontal cortex, but never travelled down any further in my brain or my body. 

I can at least look at myself now and say the words. And somehow, by being able to say them to myself it helps me believe the words I read in the Bible over and again - God so loves the world, God finds the creation good and humankind very good, God sings over me (I like to think in the same way I croon again and again about the wonders of my wonder-pup.). God is a parent holding a new born for the very first time and staring at the infant in awe and wonder - and Love.

I hope gaining incremental self-acceptance has also grown my love for all the fallible people around me. I think it has. Because as I am learning to love all my shortcomings (and God loves even those shortcomings - God loves everything about me*), I become more aware of my additional shortcomings (like they've been waiting in line to meet me all these years) and in turn, I have more grace when others show me their faults and foibles. It's like, "Hey, I do that, too! Don't you hate it when that happens?" Most of the time, I'd say they do. I hurt for them when they seem unaware or utterly bent on blasting the world in some way. And still, I know I, too, am unaware and utterly bent on blasting the world - just as much as I long for paths of reconciliation and peace.

So here is to Love which simply Loves "for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health" all the days of our lives.

*If anyone ever reads this and has a certain background, they may be affronted by this statement because the adage is "God loves the sinner, but hates the sin." Like we have some substance purely holy somewhere within us, like God is not powerful enough to love all of who we are. As if Love itself is not powerful enough to "cover a multitude of sins." If God loves us at all, God loves all of us, because God created all of us, exactly as we are.  

Lenten Love

Lenten Love

Some may think it odd that Lent begins on Valentine's Day this year. As if love and sacrifice never coincide, yet given Lent journeys to God - self-sacrificing - as God would rather die than kill the humans God made and called good (so the story goes). Really, is it surprising? 

I have no idea who might find or read this blog this Lent. If anyone. Yet I need this space to focus my mind for the next 40 days +

And maybe more, I need the space to remind myself to focus on Love - as this seems the "God ordained" focus for these 40 days. 

One of my pastors had lovely insights into the Scripture readings for the beginning of Lent. Then she and our other pastor engaged with the imposition of ashes (another turn of phrase ripe for picking) - but I do not remember any of them.

I remember the passage from Mark, beginning this journey this year. The one where God calls down (or around, or inside, or up - hard to know) to Jesus coming up from the water, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased." 

A book on neuroscience and spiritual formation recently encouraged me to consider this phrase and turn it toward myself. Where God says to me, "This is my Daughter in whom I am well pleased." And actually, the author personalizes it more, "You are my Daughter in whom I am well pleased." Initially the thought raised my suspicions, but then, really, what is the Bible if not a book whose main message communicates God's Love to all of creation. . .God would rather die than harm us for all the many ways we know (and don't know) we fall short of a standard we could never meet in the first place. 

And while I can spout many reasons why this unrelenting, unearned Love is dangerous and maybe, rightfully held at at arm's length, "getting it" in some manner is the most important task of life. 

So ramblings about "getting it," or trying to, becomes the devotion of this 40+ day adventure of Lent.

To Love

2.14.24