Category Archives: Lent

LENT: Grace is Enough

12 Saturday Mar 2022

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Grace is enough…

This Lent, on overload once again, I have chosen as my Lenten practice to notice and be grateful for the ways and times that Grace gets in and is enough for me to give thanks and bear the freight of the day. Certainly the world is giving us too much to bear it seems, when war has broken our with grim prognostications, the governmental systems are not only frayed but mired in standoffs, the environment has gone beyond groaning to wailing as it suffers, our institutions seem be coming apart at the seams, and the specter of COVID still looms over all.

So my attention has been pulled back to a favorite grounding text, in which the apostle Paul recounts his own misery, and then concludes that “God’s Grace is sufficient for me.” (2 Corinthians 12: 9).My intention this Lent is to look for, take note, savor and give thanks each day for the way the Grace has been sufficient. It has been more challenging than I imagined, not because the Grace is absent or hiding, but because my own perception, imagination and attentiveness are often underdeveloped. Nevertheless, in this first full week of Lent this is where Grace has appeared:

  • a first rose has blossomed in my garden
  • a Mother Hummingbird has reoccupied a nest tucked up under the eaves, and tends her eggs vigilantly
  • a grandchild moved into real adolescence, with a good bill of health and much joie de vivre
  • plans changed on a dime, and Spirit brought to me a peaceable flexibility and welcome
  • my prayer for deep listening and patience to understand another’s point of view were delivered when I needed them
  • a loved one came though a surgery with ease
  • a Zoom gathering brought celebration and laughter across both Pacific and Atlantic Ocean
  • my imagination was sparked as I filled bags of books for those who need them, while letting go of things which once gave me joy and I no longer need

My list could go on for ages. And I was reminded by so many Wise Ones of the ways that my faith continues to hold me in the arms of the Holy One of Grace, whose love never ceases, as I am taught how to love with Grace. Professor Kate Bowler brought me this reminder in her new book Good Enough with Jessica Richie; she quotes Thomas Merton here:

To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us–and he has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes the difference.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

I am choosing to notice, to name, to savor Grace this Lent–and to be grateful!

Clouds (Crowds) of Sorrow

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

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“give your sorrow all of its due…Elly Hillesum

In taught a class at church in preparation for Lent, I suggested, after Walter Brueggemann, that one path of practice was to take up the ancient practice of lament, of grieving for that which was lost, broken or dead, as a prophetic statement on the way to hope. Little did I know how deeply that is being called for in me in this Lent. Bruggemann says that the practice of grief is counter to denial, and it “summons the city to be fully, deeply and knowingly engaged in its actual life experience.” (Reality, Grief, Hope, p, 57)

Even with that conviction I have not been prepared for the onslaught of sorrows that keep pouring forth in this season: the deaths of people from my past lives–a former student, a seminary companion, a member of my congregation. And there has been what seem like daily losses of the familiar avenues of routine–access to groceries, freedom to move about the city, gathering for worship, the natural friendly embraces on which I rely. Overlying those changes, which range from inconvenience to outright loss, is the loss of trust in what is being said in the media and from “expert” sources. What is true? on whom can I rely? for what?

The presence of the Covid-19 virus among us has exacerbated all those losses with its threat of contagion, contamination and death, I find myself in a group called “elderly,” at risk, and therefore, the loss of the cultural prize of “youth” and its privilege of place. And the threat of disease is real and unknown, hence a loss of a sense of protection and safety for myself, for those I love, for those for whom I pray.

As much as I am enculturated to glide over grief, to “just get over it,” I find myself this fourth week of Lent called to enter into this cloud, or as Rumi puts it, this “crowd of sorrows.” Rumi asks that I welcome them, even as they “violently sweep the house/empty of its furniture.” I am finding again that the Psalmist also lifts a voice, inviting lament to deep and concrete grieving. Both of these teachers demonstrate that this grieving is clearing the path to the Hope that is the final Word.

It is not lost to me that Lenten practice in some communities has often focused on penitence, on personal confession and recognition of brokenness, sorrow for sin, “things done and undone.” And in this crisis of our life and times, I am woefully aware of the ways in which I am more critical, more fearful, more selfish than what I am called to be by living in Grace. That makes me sad. I would have hoped that by my age and stage, I would be more compassionate, more trusting, more full of Grace.

So I grieve! And with the grieving, I stand in solidarity with our world, and its many particular people who suffer in so many profound ways, Rabbi Earl Grollman writes, “The only cure for grief is to grieve…there is no way to predict what you will feel.” I pray my grief–with the Psalms, with poetry, with music, with walking the labyrinth. And I am sure that grief is not the last Word.

I am free to grieve, because I grieve with Hope in mind. Actually that is the endgame of this entire cloudy Lent–there is Resurrection at the end! There are no final defeats! God keeps my tears in a bottle, as I cleanse the way for the Light to arise! I am giving my grief its due, but only its due!

Clouds of Lent

01 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in faith, Hope, Lent, Love, Uncategorized

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clouds of unknowing

Lent is frequently depicted in linear fashion, one day, one Sunday after another. However, this year I am feeling more as if I have entered a cloud of a season, unclear, unpredictable, with poor visibility. I have taught a class on preparing for Lent, with particular attention to the ways we observe it in my tradition. I have considered and decided practices that I want to follow during these “40 days,” minus Sundays. I have considered the external signs that signify Lent in the Church: purple paraments, special services for Ash Wednesday and Holy Week, a purple candle alight where I sit for sacred conversations, a cross in the sanctuary for prayerful intentions to be tied with ribbons. But somehow in these days in none of those things are giving shape and order to my days, my musing, my habits.

Instead I am needing to continue to travel each day as it arises, some days not knowing where I am going or where I will end up. Some of this is shaped by the ongoing recovery of my husband after surgery. Some is shaped by deadlines set by agencies and “powers that be.” Sometimes the calendar for this year demands attention to occasion that are counter in spirit to Lenten solemnity. And sometimes “things fall apart,” according to Chinua Achebe, “the best laid plans go oft agley,” as Robert Burns tells us. Lent is not so much a journey as it is an ambiance, a backdrop, a cloud of mist which covers my intentional forward vision. This week alone, I have encountered tears and laughter, memory and forgetting, beauty and ugliness, health and healing. And I haven’t known what will arrive until is does! No guarantee that what I plan will be what I can or will do!

So am thrown back on the many times in sacred text where the promise is that clarity will emerge, where resources will be provided, and where Grace will abound. I love the early Christian hymn which names that state of unknowing: Now we see in a mirror dimly…Now I know only in part…” (1 Cor, 13: 12). Then the hymn writer points us back to the daily practices, Lent or not: And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (v.13) So in the midst of this cloud, I can find some place to practice paying attention to the Jesus journey, by asking myself as each new event or demand arises: does this help me be Faithful–to the Holy? to the ones I love? to those given to me to serve? And/or does this help me be Hopeful, sharing that hope with those I encounter? And most importantly, will this be something to which I can be bring Love, which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things. endures all things?

Joni Mitchell taught me long ago that clouds have many sides to them, that I really don’t know clouds at all, but I don’t need to know what the clouds have in store. I can, with Spirit tenderness and presence, show up for the cloud of each day with Faith, Hope and Love, on this Lenten journey, even as Jesus whom I follow did!

Into Holy Week: Taking Delight in Love

12 Friday Apr 2019

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Lent is coming to an end, and I turn into Holy Week, and I have just celebrated another wedding anniversary. In my practice of Taking Delight this Lent, I am aware of how many ways Love has shown up and continues to show up, around me and in the events we commemorate next week, enough to fill an alphabet:

Love is Ample. Love is Blessed. Love is Caring. Love is Delightful. Love is Elegant. Love is Forgiving. Love is Graceful. Love is Holy. Love is Imaginative. Love is Joyful. Love is Kind. Love is Lavish. Love is Mysterious. Love is Nuanced. Love is Observant. Love is Pliable. Love is Quintessential. Love is Redemptive. Love is Splendid. Love is Thoughtful. Love is Useful. Love is Volatile. Love is Wrestling. Love is eXtraordinary! Love is Yearning. Love is Zesty.

And Love is all around–in creation, in children, in old folks, in longtime enemies–now reconciled, in congregations and gatherings, in memories, in animals and birds, in friends and lovers. And in the Presence of the Holy.

During this coming week I will be seeing where Love appears still–in sacred texts, in worshiping groups, in conversations, in halls of governance and political encounter (!), and even in moments of solitude and silence. My prayer is not just that I can take delight in the Love I find, but that I will learn to practice and share Love more deeply in the Easter season to come, awash in the gifts given me through the Holy One–compassion, self-giving, and New Life! I will take Delight in the Love!


Lent 5: Taking Delight in Grace

04 Thursday Apr 2019

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photo taken in Trois-Rievieres Quebec

I found myself in a very large gathering of people I had not seen for a long time. Each of them had a personal history and a history with me that was checkered and some of which included a great deal of brokenness and pain. While the main text of the gathering was going on, a deeper part of me was reliving and evaluating those narratives, listening to my own judgements and critiques of past events. Mercifully, (and I do mean that literally), as the day wore on, I began to relax into what Denise Levertov describes this way: into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,/knowing that no effort earns/that all-surrounding grace. It wasn’t necessary for me to carry the darkness of the past: in Grace I could let go, and take delight in what Grace had brought into those stories that meant healing, freedom and redemption for everyone involved.

My journey has been revolutionized by coming to recognize Grace, and to continue to learn over the course of my years, “even into old age,” the depths and heights of that Grace. I seldom have had as graphic and audible an encounter as the one I just described, but Grace abounds in daily and dramatic of my life, if I am awake and taking delight in it. I think of this week alone–an accident averted, a garden in bud and about to bloom, the poetry of Lucy Shaw, cards and notes of friendship, acts of kindness by the clerk when I was confronted with automatic checkout at the grocery store. Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat in their wonderful book of reflection called Spiritual Rx call those things “gracelets” this signs of God’s presence that indeed feel like gifts.

I am half way through Lent now, remembering to take delight is becoming a little more intrinsic in my daily routine. However, training my senses to discover Grace is a little more challenging. The banner lines and news shouts emphasize “gotcha” moments, bleat out dire predictions, and revise history in a way that frightens, demoralizes and leads the ways to despair. So I need to be vigilant in seeking with grace-filled eyes where Grace is happening. As I sat down to compose this blog entry, a tiny article, clipped long ago by me, surfaced from under the stacks of paper on my desk. The author is Bryan Doyle, and it was included in The Best Spiritual Writing of 2001. Here is is:

First rule of grace: grace rules. Grace lifts, it brings to joy. And what, as we age, do we cherish and savor more than joy? Pleasure, power, fame, lust, money, they eventually lose their fastballs, or should. At our best and wisest we just want joy, and when we are filled with grace we see rich, thick joy in the simplest of things. Joy everywhere.

Notice how many saints–whom we assume were and are crammed to the eyeballs with grace–are celebrated for their childlike simplicity, their capacity to sense divine joy in everything: the daily resurrection of light, the dust of sparrows.

Grace indeed! I am delighted!

Lent 3: Taking Delight in Beauty

28 Thursday Mar 2019

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Seeds of Love by Charles White

Beauty was suspect in the circles in which I grew up. The suspicion was anchored in Proverbs 31:30 which is its description of a virtuous women declares that “Beauty is vain…“ Somehow that became expanded to the encouragement of ignoring, even judging, human beauty when one encountered it. Mercifully I have discovered wider concentric circles of understanding, in writers like Belden Lane in his book, Ravished by Beauty, that my traditions of origin actually encouraged a love of the Beauty of God, in creation certainly, in worship always, and this Lent I am taking delight in the beauty of human beings!

Facebook has plenty of reasons to call for discernment about its use and its business dealings, but today I celebrate the beauty of the Faces that Facebook gives me. This week it has showed me the face of a saint, just gone home to glory, whom I loved for many years; there was the beauty of age, of wisdom, along with the whimsy and compassion that always lived in the lines of that familiar countenance. I delight in the face, even as I grieve.

I also was able to take great joy in the purely unformed face of a brand new baby, unfocused, vulnerable, with no thought for what is ahead, just trying to get comfortable in this brand new world. And Facebook shows me almost daily the beauty of my family–from their beginnings, through their growing into who they are becoming. My heart is full of joy and praise for the unique creature each one is–the eyes of the imp, the stature of the leader, the dance of the friend, the grace of the scholar, the look of concern of the openhearted, the laughing companionship of the friendly. Sometimes when in the presence of these beloved ones, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for who I see, that I have a part in each life, however great or small, and I take deep delight.

However, I do not need to rely on Facebook to delight in the faces of God’s creation. I sit with people each week, and I marvel at the uniqueness of each one. Recently I witnessed the animation in the face of one who was newly energized by a new word that came, and the whole face was transformed. I sat with one in deep sorrow, and through the tears and wordlessness, there was a poignant beauty that was fully human and hope-filled. Another face was a study in hope fulfilled, as when there seemed not to be a way forward, a way opened up.

The variety is infinite! I have new neighbors, from a faraway land. The beauty takes such a different shape than my round blue-eyed blonds. But what dimensions of beauty are revealed. I meet an old friend, and the beauty that is theirs has taken a new shape–less spry, more white hair (or less hair!), but wisdom is now embedded in gaze and in expression and demeanor! How lovely!

I become more and more appreciative of visual artists like Charles White, who in his artistry help me see beauty in those who suffer, in those who take risks, in those who struggle, in those who are faithful over a long road. I am invited to take delight in the creature that each one was made to be, and am challenged to let my delight morph into acting for justice for those to whom it is denied!

Taking delight in the faces of those who are made in the image of God–that is my practice this week, and that is my challenge! God, be in my eyes and in my seeing!

Lent: Giving Up and Letting Go

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

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I have really wrestled with discerning a Lenten practice this year. I had thought that I would “give up” certain things in my eating habits this Lent, although in other Lents, I more often have added things–works of charity and love, connections, extra giving. However, as today got nearer and nearer, I was increasingly uneasy about that the “giving up” choice, since what I long for in a practice is a window to connecting with the Holy One, not a obligatory box to check off to demonstrate my piety. Through night prayers and tossing and turning, I asked myself what right now seems to be blocking my spirit and freedom to receive and enfold the gifts of God. I had to own that what gets in my way many mornings and nights is my habit of hanging on to the negative, judgemental and toxic, and not allow the good, the hopeful and affirming to enrich my life. Therefore, even though it will be healthy to make dietary changes, that action does not point me to the Mystery we call God. So, back to the Lenten sketch pad!

In the wee hours of the morning these old familiar words from Psalm 37 bubbled up out of my darkness. Take delight in the Lord, and God will give you the desires of your heart.” (V. 4) The challenge to TAKE DELIGHT struck a deep chord in my heart. Instead of prying my hand open to let go of an unhealthy habit, I was being invited to turn my hand upward to receive the delights that the Holy has for me, even the love and affirmation that God has for who I am, just the way I am. I checked with my favorite paraphrase of the Psalm from Swallow’s Nest by Marchienne Vroon Rienstra, and see that she expands that thought even more generously: If you delight yourself in God/ She will give you the desires of your heart…She will make your integrity shine like the daylight/, your beauty glow like the moon and the sun. 

So I begin this Lenten season. these 40 days, with a lighter and more open heart, with the question: where do I experience the delight of God–in me. in my location, even in the world? And noticing it, let my heart praise what I see, and then share that good news with those around me? In the words of Mary Oliver: Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.  I understand this invitation to be not one of passivity, but of an energy that takes me from sharpened awareness to deep heart praise, to active sharing of goodness with a world that is desperate for hope, healing and grace. 





My heart is grateful for the Midnight Caller, the Spirit that brings illumination even in my darkness. May the Lenten journey be one of deepening, widening, opening and trusting for me and all of us! 






					


	





	

								
A Mixed Up Lent
										

			24
			Saturday
			Feb 2018
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in body, darkness, Lent, Light, presence, Uncategorized		

		

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chagallmixedcostumes


I am upside down and all turned around this Lent! On the one hand, there are all the traditional calls to introspection (not not too much), to repentance (but not too harsh!), to giving up and self-denial (but doing no harm!). On the other hand, I hear the calls to act, to affirm, to resist, to look for the places where the Light can get in. It did not help me that on Ash Wednesday, the liturgy and focus of which is very clear, it was also Valentine’s Day, for me the anniversary of my first date with my lifetime Beloved, and we were celebrating with sweetness and grace. To add to the confusion was the unbelievable act of terror and violence in Parkland, Florida, not far from where one of my beloveds goes to college. And there was the outpouring of unfiltered opinions and screeds that followed publicly in the aftermath. So where do I plant myself this Lenten season?


I also live in a body with ups and downs, among a people whose bodies have ups and downs. Will I know on a particular day whether I have enough sleep to be able to set out on my Lenten intentions? Will the diagnostic test take me in a different direction than I planned? Will the pernicious and virulent viruses and bacteria swirling around this year pass by me by or land in my throat? On a mundane and frivolous level, what should  I plan to wear day to day–sackcloth and ashes or my dancing shoes?


I have hunkered down to what is basic. Each day I am asking myself: what does my soul need? To stay alive, to go deep, to become closer to the intention of the Holy for me today! And I ask myself: where am I encountering Joy? In breath itself, in creation, in the “littles,” and in the hearts, voices and bodies of those who live their truths unwaveringly. Sacred text grounds me in the constancy of the Holy One; poetry challenges me to find new language for what I believe and continue to believe; mystery stories amuse, divert and give me rest. My soul is refueled with energy and imagination, as I count not only blessings, but wonder and truth and grace.


Then, I am trying to see what the the day holds: a phone call, a change of plans, a lunch re-connection, some quiet reading, a trip to the doctor, a meeting. In each of those I am bringing a consciousness of Holy Spirit accompanying me, nudging me, illuminating me, holding me back. Some days it is a time to share Love–with snacks and coloring, with recommending a book, with listening. Some days it is a day to weep and mourn–with those who weep, with our children, for the grief of the world.


The Singer of Psalms knew the dilemmas: “My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors./Let your face shone upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.” (31:15-16). So each day I awake–rummaging around for soul food, catching the joy as it flies. Either way, whatever I am called to wear, to do, to sing, my heart and schedule are in Loving Hands. For this Lent, ending on another mixed metaphor–Easter and April Fool’s Day–that is enough!

					


	





	

								
Points of Sorrow: Valleys and Shadows
										

			30
			Thursday
			Mar 2017
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in compassion, dryness, grief, Lent, sanctuary, Spirit		

		

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I have been comforted on my Lenten journey to encounter Holy Presence in signs and detours and delight. However, I am deeply aware that I am also daily faced with other phenomena: valleys–of the shadow of death, of dry bones, of tears; and of depths–sorrow, fears and despair. I am of that era in my life where news of death, of troubling diagnoses, of unbearable losses are so regular that they are almost routine. Not a day goes by without another request for prayer–for the world, for the nation, for the Church, and for people who are loved and cherished. And so I travel the Lenten way on a road of mourning as well as rejoicing.


The “valley of the shadow of death” becomes more real to me each year. I have been helped greatly by reading the two volumes by Marilyn Chandler McEntryre for those traveling in that valley, those who are facing death themselves, A Faithful Farewell,

and for those losing someone they love, A Long Letting Go. The author herself, no stranger to grief, gives some perspective, some comfort and some practical helps is the process of mourning:


To mourn is to open ourselves to comfort, which is a unique dimension of love. To mourn is to make our sorrow hospitable to those who are willing to enter into it…Our work is to accept the sorrow, to live it, to suffer it, and finally in humility to let it be drenched in the healing waters of love that come to us from as many sources as we allow–great wells of it, great waves of it, and daily infusions from old friends and from strangers who may be angels sent to walk us through the valley of the shadow. (A Long Letting Go,pp. 84-85)


Part of my Lenten journey is to do this work of mourning, on behalf of those whom I have lost, and on behalf of those who are in the valley of the shadow themselves right now. Yesterday I heard of two more friends who have lost parents, always a turning point in each person’s life. I now know that grieving is holy work, an important piece of giving sanctuary to those I am given in the world.


Others within my ken can only see a Valley of Dry Bones when they look at our world–few life givers, few Spirit breathers, few points of Light. I resonate with that. If I only read headlines, banners and listen to sound bites, I know that dry bones might be all that I could see also. But I feel strongly that even as I look at the Truth, with as much clarity as I can, I must point to and witness to a bigger reality than the current state of things in the universe, the nations, the Church, even in the microcosms of deadness in our personal lives. I believe that in God’s providence, there are no final defeats. Therefore, I plant myself in that reality as a starting place on my Lenten journey, and then pray, as I weep over the Valley of Dry Bones, that the Spirit will breathe Life back into them. I ask also what my part will be in that; to whom do I speak? to whom do I give? am I invited to bear witness in a way that is public and noticeable?


And with those whose losses can seem less tangible, less noticeable, less dramatic, but who like the Psalmist have experienced that “tears have been my food day and night, while people say continually, ‘Where is your God?'”, I am to be a friend listening to their truth with respect and without judgement, and without letting their sorrow become my sorrow, only holding them with compassion and hope.


These valleys and shadows are not the easiest part of the Lenten journey. And once again I turn to a British hymn set to a French carol:


When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,/your touch can call us back to life again;/fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:/Love is come again like wheat that riseth green.                                               (John Crum, 1928)


I hold this as I continue on my Lenten way, for those I have lost, for those I love, and for myself.


 


 


Personal photo of street art in St. Petersburg, Florida.


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Points of Hope: Signs and Symbols
										

			24
			Friday
			Mar 2017
		

	
	

		

			Posted  by  in beauty, grace, joy, Lent, paying attention		

		

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Even though the Lenten journey is a serious one, leading to an intense Holy Week, I am also looking for signs and symbols that point me to hope along the way. Because Lent and Easter are so late in the calendar year this year, the days are accompanied by the signs of spring, even in our supposedly “season-less” Southern California.


My irises in the drought resistant garden are thriving, especially with the unusual rainfall. There has been a constant parade of beautiful blooms beginning in Advent (white) and continuing on with Lent, all purple, four come and gone, four to about to burst forth. The liquid amber tree and the fig tree next door have tender green leaves and shoots multiplying each day. The ornamental plum tree and the peach tree are showing their tiny flowers. All of them remind me that after the winter, after rain, after the Great Grayness there is Hope. The Creator has made each thing beautiful in its own time.


Another sign of hope has been discoveries of missing things. In my clearing out and de-cluttering, I have found things that I believed to have vanished–some pairs of socks, a quotation that I had written out on a card with decoration, some pairs of old shoes. I am reminded, even in the simple nature of the retrievals, that with the Holy One, nothing is lost, there are no final defeats. Hope can spring up.


Some signs locate me. Some creative people in the neighborhood painted the power boxes on many corners with folk art, reminding us of who we are, where we are, a gathering of people from many nations, places and beginnings. And we are people who in proximity to the freeway are people on the go, working, traveling, walking the dog. It is important to me as I journey, not to forget where I am grounded, where I am heading and whence I have come.


In the providential movement of this season, I have been engrossed by three memoirs, chosen without intentional theme, that have reflected to me a part of my beginnings that still shape me, but from which I have moved. Each writer comes from a different place than I have geographically, and each one is younger, but we have in common a shared religious heritage that gave us great gifts and enormous challenges. As I watch and listen to each voice, I am filled with hope. Thought there have been moments of pain, or disorientation, of wandering without a map, each woman has found her spiritual center, her place of belonging and her traveling mercies. I have found joyful hope in locating myself at points on each journey, and sharing moment  of  Grace.


I am finding that Lent is not only solemn and gray, but is also alive with reminders that Light and Darkness together are part of our human pilgrimage. This year it is profoundly important for me to remember that here on earth, although there is tremendous grief and suffering, there is also the whimsy, laughter, cheer, surprise of hope that manifests itself, sometimes daily–in the smile of the server, the grace of the responsive leader, the compassion of the helper, the delight of the discoverer, the unfettered laughter of old friends, remembering the way we were, and how it is Grace that has led us safely this far. I have taken on as a Lenten practice to look for those signs.


I am reminded of an old Brian Andreas drawing in which the angel appears to him in tights, he laughs and then knows that when signs appear, if there is no laughter in them, they are not for him. Nor are they for me. And neither are they for me if there is no Grace, no Joy, no Hope. On our way through Holy Week I am like the faithful one singing Psalm 126 of Ascent: ..our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy…the Lord has done great things for us, as well as small ones, in tiny but unmistakable signs. In Lent, I can rejoice.


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