it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?

what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?...

---by Drew Dellinger (spoken poet)

The Art of Losing: Maundy Thursday

As I googled "stripping the altars" for Maundy Thursday, I came up with a link to a good article "Stripped Bare: Holy Week and the Art of Losing" in the May 16, 2012 issue of Christian Century. It was so good that I posted it on FB, which seems to be looked upon more frequently than this blog. I hope you'll read it.

The author of that article, Richard Lischer, pointed to a poem by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), a new poet for me.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.SpPvsGvI.dpuf

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.SpPvsGvI.dpuf

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.SpPvsGvI.dpuf

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.SpPvsGvI.dpuf

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.SpPvsGvI.dpuf

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212#sthash.SpPvsGvI.dpuf

Our Lord of Flaked Paint

Our Lord of Flaked Paint freckling
sallow skin and emerald robes,

Our Lord of Mudpuddle Eyes
that look away in weary irritation,

no one can touch your loneliness,
God cut off from God.

You who flamed a world into being
with only words, stood

in the midst of bickering men,
fig trees dying, and sparrows

falling to the ground.
Were there days when heat and dust,

the smell of stale crowds
pushing you from place to place,

asking for one more resurrection,
food for thousands

or withered hands healed,
made you want to slash the canvas,

fly back to heaven and start fresh
on some new world far away?

Days where your head ached
from sun on sand and water,

where your throat scraped raw
from shouting Blessed are. . . to men

who would go home, forget, and return
to nail you to a piece of wood?

No one understood your stories,
could grasp that you would trade

legions of angels
for nine ungrateful lepers,

the friend who turned you in,
and never enough sleep.

Our Lord of Omnipotent Frustration
with your halo like a setting sun,

your hand is raised as if to bless me,
though I can't imagine why.

~~Jana-Lee Germaine

Christian Century, November 3, 2009.

Lent Madness: Basil about "Prayer"

This Lent, I am subscribing to daily emails from Lent Madness, in which 32 saints are place in competition to determine which one gets the “golden halo” at the end of Lent. Each day, two are offered with their biographies and votes are taken. Now we are down to 16 “winners” to vote for each day. (Surprisingly, yesterday John Wesley was defeated by his brother Charles!)

Today the vote is between Basil the Great and Antony of Egypt. I really liked a few quotes of Basil about prayer, which I am posting below:

How to Pray

"Prayer is a request for what is good, offered by the devout of God. But we do not restrict this request simply to what is stated in words. We should not express our prayer merely in syllables, but also through the attitude of our soul and in the virtuous actions we do in our life. This is how you pray continually — not by offering prayer in words, but by joining yourself to God through your whole way of life, so that your life becomes one continuous and uninterrupted prayer."

Praying Daily

"When you sit down to eat, pray. When you eat bread, do so thanking God for being so generous to you. If you drink wine (or coffee), be mindful of God who has given it to you for your pleasure and as a relief in sickness. When you dress, thank God for His kindness in providing you with clothes. When you look at the sky and the beauty of the stars, throw yourself at God’s feet and adore Him who ordered things this way. When the sun goes down and when it rises, when you are asleep or awake, give thanks to God, who created and arranged all things for your benefit, to have you know, love and praise their Creator."

This was also posted for "Thursday Prayer" at RevGalBlogPals.

This Lenting

This lenting
 
is a longing, looking,

isolating and locating process,

a passing of the time between

what has to be, what may become,

a late, last, solitary lingering

among the soiled and crusted snowbanks

of deep-drifted hurt and disappointment

seeking out those tender-tough new shoots

that pierce the calloused surface

of all losing with the agony

of life becoming green again.

by J. Barrie Shepherd.

A Different Kind of Fasting

The beautiful sunshine outside distracts me from thoughts of Lent, but Christine Valters Paintner writes these words of reflection at this beginning of Lent:


"Alan Jones describes the desert relationship to death in this way:  'Facing death gives our loving force, clarity, and focus. . . even our despair is to be given up and seen as the ego-grasping device that it really is.  Despair about ourselves and our world is, perhaps, the ego’s last and, therefore, greatest attachment.'

"I have been sitting with Jones' words and the invitation to fast during Lent, one of the central practices we are called to take on. The first reading today from the prophet Joel summons us to 'return to God with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning.'

"But the kind of fast drawing me this season isn't leaving behind of treats like chocolate or other pleasures. This season I am being invited to fast from things like 'ego-grasping' and noticing when I so desperately want to be in control, and then yielding myself to a greater wisdom than my own.

"I am called to fast from being strong and always trying to hold it all together, and instead embrace the profound grace that comes through my vulnerability and tenderness, to allow a great softening this season.

"I am called to fast from anxiety and the endless torrent of thoughts which rise up in my mind to paralyze me with fear of the future, and enter into the radical trust in the abundance at the heart of things, rather than scarcity.

"I am called to fast from speed and rushing through my life, causing me to miss the grace shimmering right here in this holy pause.

"I am called to fast from multitasking and the destructive energy of inattentiveness to any one thing, so that I get many things done, but none of them well, and none of them nourishing to me. Instead my practice will become a beholding of each thing, each person, each moment.

"I am called to fast from endless list-making and too many deadlines, and enter into the quiet and listen for what is ripening and unfolding, what is ready to be born.

"I am called to fast from certainty and trust in the great mystery of things.

"And then perhaps, I will arrive at Easter and realize those things from which I have fasted I no longer need to take back on again. I will experience a different kind of rising."

~Christine Valters Paintner

To read the entire article go here.

And if you would like to receive a weekly newsletter from Christine, you may subscribe by going here.

Giving Up Something for Lent?

"What most of us neglect- with more regularity than we might care to admit - is God. So this Lent, instead of giving up chocolate, give up neglecting God."

Debra K. Farrington's article is here.

Lent Madness!

I signed up for Lent Madness. Watch this video and see if you want to participate, too.

Make a New Habit!

"We are converted not only once in our lives but many times. 

And the conversion is little by little. 

Sometimes it is as imperceptible as grass growing. 

But Lent gives us a time to move the process along. 

Intentionally. 

By small surrenders." (6)

~~Emilie Griffin, Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey

The period of Lent begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. This is traditionally a time for Christians to take up a practice of addition or subtraction to learn greater love for God and less self-satisfaction. I like Emilie Griffin's words above in relating this to a small surrender: any effort is a small surrender of one's self-indulgence. It is also serendipitously a way to create a new habit. . . .or a way to start working towards that.

People used to say that it takes 3 weeks to make a new habit, but current research indicates that it takes  longer. "If we can just keep it up for 21 days, it'll become a habit, right? Not so fast. The three-week rule is something of an urban legend, found a study led by Phillippa Lally, PhD, a psychologist at University College London. It actually took people 66 days (9.5 weeks) for a behavior to become automatic (or feel weird not to do it). But that's just an average. Some habits, such as drinking a bottle of water after lunch, turned out to be much stickier (it took 59 days on average) than doing 50 sit-ups each morning (91 days). Forging a new habit gets easier and easier as you gain momentum, Lally says. Eventually you'll stop counting the days… and just do it."(from 6 Ways to Become a Creature of New Habits)

So 40 days is halfway or "almost there" for reaching the ease of having a new habit. It is an intentional process in living a better way--in greater awareness.

It could be as small or simple as adding a glass of water each day to one's life, or subtracting one hour of tv each day. I've even thought it would be beneficial to add 2 minutes of meditation every day. That's do-able, right?

So think of a small surrender of addition or subtraction you can easily do for the next 40 days. . . and maybe longer.

Friday Five: A Little Bit Random

Deb brings today's Friday Five for RevGalBlogPals:

I have been busy writing “professional” papers, where it is required that staid, measured prose be properly footnoted, annotated and credited. I am tired of living there!

However, my creative brain is somewhere in the land of strange to illogical. So join me in my flight of thought and tell us:

1. A color that you enjoy (and where you find it)
Green, and with spring comes the bright fresh green of new leaves, especially on the mesquite trees.

2. A food or drink you have discovered recently that is just da bomb!
I LOVE the soup recipes found in The New England Soup Factory Cookbook. One of my favorites is Vegetarian Mulligatawny Soup, with the recipe found here.

3. A simile for tiredness

4. A random picture from your phone, camera or computer

Very random picture of Ben's dog Troy

5. Your least favorite bill: car mechanic, dentist or plumber?
Probably car mechanic, because that usually means something major has gone wrong--lots of charges for labor.

BONUS: If you are going to have a Lenten practice or discipline, what is it? If you have a book or on-line resource, be sure to share it!
My friend Nancy sent me a book to read for Lent, so we'll be reading it together even though she lives in California and I live in Texas: God for Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Lent and Easter. Another book I like is Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey by Emilie Griffin.

Holy Saturday: The Space Between

Christine Valters Paintner writes of Holy Saturday as "The Space Between."

She starts off her article like this:

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more deep.
Let it ferment and season you as few human
Or even divine ingredients can.
Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice so tender,
My need of God
Absolutely clear. ~ Hafiz

"Holy Week invites us into a world full of betrayal, abandonment, mockery, violence, and ultimately death. The Triduum, those three sacred days which constitute one unfolding liturgy, call us to experience communion, loss, and the border spaces of unknowing. Holy Saturday is an invitation to make a conscious passage through the liminal realm of in-between.

"I love the wide space of Holy Saturday that lingers between the suffering and death of Jesus on Friday and the vigil Saturday night proclaiming the return of the Easter fire. For me, Holy Saturday evokes much about the human condition—the ways we are called to let go of things or people, identities or securities and then wonder what will rise up out of the ashes of our lives. The suffering that we experience because of pain or grief or great sorrow and we don't know if we will ever grasp joy again. Much of our lives rest in that space between loss and hope. Our lives are full of Holy Saturday experiences.

"In their book The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan write:

Easter completes the archetypal pattern at the center of the Christian life: death and resurrection, crucifixion and vindication. Both parts of this pattern are essential: death and resurrection, crucifixion and vindication. When one is emphasized over the other distortion is the result. The two must be affirmed equally.

"Before we rush to resurrection we must dwell fully in the space of unknowing, of holding death and life in tension with each other, to experience that liminal place so that we become familiar with its landscape and one day might accompany others who find themselves there and similarly disoriented. The wisdom of the Triduum is that we must be fully present to both the starkness of Friday and to the Saturday space between, before we can really experience the resurrection. We must know the terrible experience of loss wrought again and again in our world so that when the promise of new life dawns we can let it enter into us fully in the space carved by loss. As the great poet of Hafiz reminds us, we must let our loneliness "cut more deep" and "season" us, so that we are reminded of our absolute dependence on the Source of all."

Go HERE to read the rest of her piece on Holy Saturday, with these suggestions to try today:

"Much of our lives are spent in Holy Saturday places but we spend so much energy resisting, longing for resolution and closure. Our practice this day is to really enter into the liminal zone, to be present to it with every cell of our being.

"Make some time on Holy Saturday to sit with all of the paradoxes of life. Bring yourself as fully present as you can to the discomfort of the experience. Rest in the space of waiting and unknowing and resist trying to come up with neat answers or resolutions. Imagine yourself on a wild border or standing on a threshold, knowing that you cannot fully embrace what is on the other side until you have let this place shape and form your heart. When you notice your attention drifting or your mind starting to analyze, return to your breath and the present moment. Allow yourself to feel whatever arises in this space. Honor the mystery."

Good Friday: Inner Challenge

Lynn Jericho composed a set of questions to ask oneself today for the Inner Challenge of Good Friday:

As I wrote the questions below, I realized they ask you to experience yourself as a victim or a perpetrator.  A victim has a perpetrator, a perpetrator, a victim.

But the I-beyond-consciousness does not live in stories where there are victims or perpetrators.  Certainly, Christ Consciousness is not about victimhood, shame, guilt, hatred or other feelings, attitudes, or judgments that separate, divide, or kill the heart or soul of anyone, especially your own.

As you look at these questions, can you feel the pain without shame, guilt, hatred, any feeling that is not permeated with love.

False Witness
Do you lie about yourself to yourself, to others?

And when have you silently born false witness on another's soul? Why?

 If we don't offer the dark, selfish parts of ourselves compassion and forgiveness, will we ever be whole - resurrect into a new vital experience of I.

The Judging
Do you know the prejudiced judge in your own soul that accuses the part of you that longs to speak the truth, love freely, do powerful deeds?

Have you accused, judged, and condemned yourself or others?

Have you ever washed your hands of standing for the innocence of another or the strength of your own goodness?

The Flogging and Mocking
Have you had to suffer the pain of flogging and the humiliation of mockery?

 What is self-flogging? Is it your constant self-doubt, your food binging, your obsession with knowing everything, your inability to earn enough money? And self-mockery?

What do you do when you look in the mirror? Do you mock your body? Do you write from your heart and then rip it to shreds? Do you tell yourself you are unworthy and undeserving?

The Bearing of the Cross
Often the crosses we bear are the weight of our own defenses and identities we created to hide or avoid or survive.  What are the crosses that you bear?

Does anyone ever offer to help you carry them by listening to your stories, caring for your suffering, seeing the truth of your heart?

The Crucifixion and Death
So often our destiny requires that we suffer and die to ourselves. Each year on Good Friday we can ask ourselves have I died to myself so that I can live for others?

We don't need to say yes, but it is very good to ask ourselves the question and be willing to be surprised by the answer.

Praying at Gethsemane

Gethsemane
by Mary Oliver

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.

Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move,
maybe,
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a
blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.
 

 

Title:	Praying at Gethsemane
Notes:	Dr. He Qi is a professor at the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary and a tutor for master candidate students in the Philosophy Department of Nanjing University. He is also a member of the China Art Association and a council member of the Asian Christian Art Association.
Date:	2001
Artist:	He Qi
Material:	Other
Country:	China

Our Lord of Flaked Paint

Our Lord of Flaked Paint freckling
sallow skin and emerald robes,

Our Lord of Mudpuddle Eyes
that look away in weary irritation,

no one can touch your loneliness,
God cut off from God.

You who flamed a world into being
with only words, stood

in the midst of bickering men,
fig trees dying, and sparrows

falling to the ground.
Were there days when heat and dust,

the smell of stale crowds
pushing you from place to place,

asking for one more resurrection,
food for thousands

or withered hands healed,
made you want to slash the canvas,

fly back to heaven and start fresh
on some new world far away?

Days where your head ached
from sun on sand and water,

where your throat scraped raw
from shouting Blessed are. . . to men

who would go home, forget, and return
to nail you to a piece of wood?

No one understood your stories,
could grasp that you would trade

legions of angels
for nine ungrateful lepers,

the friend who turned you in,
and never enough sleep.

Our Lord of Omnipotent Frustration
with your halo like a setting sun,

your hand is raised as if to bless me,
though I can't imagine why.

~~Jana-Lee Germaine

Christian Century, November 3, 2009.

This Lenting

Breakthrough

This lenting
 
is a longing, looking,

isolating and locating process,

a passing of the time between

what has to be, what may become,

a late, last, solitary lingering

among the soiled and crusted snowbanks

of deep-drifted hurt and disappointment

seeking out those tender-tough new shoots

that pierce the calloused surface

of all losing with the agony

of life becoming green again.

by J. Barrie Shepherd.

Lint as Lent

From Roberta at Spiritually Directed. . . is this darling story:

WHAT IS LENT?
On the way to All Saints

"Lent Event 2009"a mother

listened to the conversation

between her two children.

One child wondered aloud:

"What is Lent, anyway?"

The sibling responded:

"It's the stuff on your clothes."

taken from here.

What is sticking to you like lint sticks to clothes?

Doubts Help

by Alexis Gilliland

I try to remember that doubts are part of the faith journey. Frederick Buechner once said that "doubts are the ants in the pants of faith." And today I read more about doubting that helps me.

"With practice we discover that there are a number of doubters within us, and they are different. To our astonishment we realize that some of them are allies and friends on the journey of faith, not blasphemous enemies. Sometimes in the climate of prayer we discover that certain doubts are like angels, agents of the Spirit of truth who is struggling to strip away from us superstitious and immature beliefs. 'Doubting the divinity of Christ' for a time may be the only way the Spirit of Christ can get us to start again from scratch and believe in his total humanity. The divine Christ of many people's conventional faith is a fiction, a demigod, not the man who is the Word made flesh. Doubts about doctrines and moral rules may be the only way the Spirit of truth can get us to move from accepting Christianity at second hand, to appropriating it for ourselves in the light of our own experience and questions. The Spirit can work better with us even if our faith is stripped right down for a time, than if we are cocooned in a complacent religiosity which we are not prepared to have disturbed."

Smith, Martin L. A Season for the Spirit: Readings for the Days of Lent. Boston: Cowley, 1991. 124.

Friday Five: Lent

1. Oddly this year, the second day of Lent was Valentine's Day. How was this for you? Was Valentine's Day any different being in Lent?

Valentine's Day is always a holiday I love, probably because I once was an elementary school teacher. I like sending and receiving Valentine cards, though I rarely get any in my own mailbox. However, this year I got four, including one "from" my 2 year old granddaughter Avery (thank you to her mom!).


It was cute that the Valentine I sent daughter MJ in Utah was the same one her boy friend sent her!

2. Did you celebrate Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday this year? Any memories of memorable celebrations past?
Although I love pancakes, I don't really like the ones made at churches. It isn't a "Fat Tuesday" celebration for me there. Usually, we attend to support the church youth groups who do this meal as a fund raiser. This year, I went out to dinner for Mexican food with my first friend in Corpus Christi in 1979, Lisa.

3. How about Ash Wednesday, past and/or present? 
On Wednesdays I lead a Lectio Divina group at First United Methodist Church and have done so for the past 15 years. So on Ash Wednesday, I always spend an hour in Lectio Divina and then go to the noon service to be reminded of my mortality. I also went to a much longer and melodic service at my church that evening.

4. Do you have a personal plan of give-ups, take-ons, special ministries, and/or a special focus for your own spiritual growth between now and Easter?
I am newly aware that springtime has a rhythm of renewal and growth and so this is a time of earth's resurgence. The old saying that an action takes 21 days of repetition to become a habit is a reminder that the 40 days of Lent can be the means for new habits to be established.


With the verses Matthew 6:19-21 for our Lectio meditation on Ash Wednesday, I am committing to ask myself at various time during each day, "What is my treasure right now?" or how am I living which indicates what I value?

5. Do you have a book or a website you are reading often during Lent?
I am taking Jane Redmont's online Lent retreat entitled "Thomas Merton, Companion on the Way."

Bonus:  Song, prayer, picture, etc. that sums up your feelings about this liturgical springtime.
I am borrowing Purple's poem here:


Easter
Sturdy, deep green tulip shoots.
How did they know
it was time to push up through the long-wintered soil?
How did they know
it was the moment to resurrect,
while thick layers of stubborn ice
still pressed the bleak ground flat?
But the tulips knew.
They came, rising strongly,
a day after the ice died.
There's a hope-filled place in me
that also knows when to rise,
that waits for the last layer of ice
to melt into obscurity.
It is urged by the strong sun
warming my wintered heart.
It is nudged by the Secret One,
calling, calling, calling:
"Arise, my love, and come."
My heart stirs like dormant tulips
and hope comes dancing forth.
Not unlike the Holy One
kissing the morning sun,
waving a final farewell
to a tomb emptied of its treasure.

© Joyce Rupp
Easter 2001

Ash Wednesday

"We are not converted only once in our lives but many times,
and this endless series of large and small conversions,
inner revolutions, leads to our transformation in Christ."
~~Thomas Merton

One of the Lenten readers I am traveling with this Lent is by Emilie Griffin: Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey. I have always liked her writing ever since I read Clinging: The Experience of Prayer, where she wrote that she noticed she was reading more about prayer than actually praying--that's a (sometimes) description of me, too.

Griffin writes:
"We are converted not only once in our lives but many times. And the conversion is little by little. Sometimes it is as imperceptible as grass growing. But Lent gives us a time to move the process along. Intentionally. By small surrenders." (6)

"Lent is our chance for a fresh start, a new page. We consciously let down our defenses against the grace of God. We admit to ourselves our need for improvement. We notice how hopeless we are. We tell God we're doing out best but we wish we could do better. We put ourselves in God's hands." (4)

I am facing this Lent with more intentionality, partly because Ash Wednesday is the anniversary of my father's death (in 2002). This is a symbol for me of the healing of my relationship and memories with him, which has been progressing in the past eight years. The death of a friend's father last week at the age of 97 brought this realization (of an inner revolution) forth, which I am marking with love today with the ashes.

Some Lent Resources

•  40 Ideas for Keeping a Holy Lent

• Looking at Lent Through Pagan Eyes

• Anglicans Online with various links

• Creighton University Lent 2013

• United Methodist Lent and Easter

• Pax Christi Lent 2013: Bread Is Life

• Christian Aid Weekly Lenten Devotions

• Bread for the World Lenten Resources

• National Catholic Reporter online Lent Retreats

• Episcopal Credo Lent 2013  

•  Lent 2013 Calendar

• Lent for Non-Lent People 

• Beliefnet Lent Resources 

• House for All Sinners and Saints 40 Ideas for Keeping Lent 

 

• Atheism for Lent (thanks to my daughter AE)