Ash Wednesday

It has been quite a long time since I have written. I have thought so many times about wanting to write but I have not had the energy. I have been busy with some great things which I will write about separately. I also have been busy just functioning. Mostly and honestly I am experiencing a wilderness. It seems most appropriate to share that now that it is Lent. The things that have brought me such joy where I hear and feel God have been silent. By faith I know God is with me. By faith I know that instead of fighting this, I need to embrace my wilderness, like Jesus did. This is my Lenten practice.

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:1-11

What motivated Jesus to spend 40 days of fasting, solitude and prayer in the desert wilderness? Where did he find His strength?

Can I spend the next 40 days fasting from the excess of my life, engaging in the prayerful solitude of centering prayer, to feed on the word of God and find the strength to do His will?

Today it begins with ashes. "From dust you have come and to dust you shall return." Life begins and life ends. There is new life with each ending. Deep within the darkness of my wilderness lies the imprint of green, the memory of life, the awareness of what has gone before and of what may yet be, the hope of transformation and new life taking hold. "From dust you have come and to dust you shall return."

Blessing for Ash Wednesday
by Jan Richardson

So let the ashes come
as beginning
and not as end;
the first sign
but not the final.
Let them rest upon you
as invocation and invitation,
and let them take you
the way that ashes know
to go.
May they mark you
with the memory of fire
and of the life
that came before the burning:
the life that rises and returns
and finds its way again.
See what shimmers
amid their darkness,
what endures
within their dust.
See how they draw us
toward the mystery
that will consume
but not destroy,
that will blossom
from the blazing,
that will scorch us
with its joy.

I wish you a blessed Lent.

Namaste,
Maureen