Food for the Soul | March 3rd, 2021
3/3/2021
Dear Friends,
God is constantly trying to show up at our door offering us new life. Do we open the door? Do we accept the gift offered? Over the course of this past year we have given up so much – it feels like a year-long Lent with a lot of fasting. I don’t know about you, but I feel my locked-up being withering away into nothingness, like a wave of inertia and lethargy has overcome my usual energetic and positive self. I try to go out for a walk, but my favorite paths are still full of snow and ice; here and there I glimpse a promise of spring, a small green blade peeking out of the soil; if I look up into the bare trees, lo and behold, there are small buds waiting to explode with life; and yet the ground is still covered with snow. The whiteness is radiant. In the midst of all this beauty I am feeling lost, distanced, tired of my desert, of my physical ‘cell,’ my four walls. I busy myself with the things I need to do in the hope this will show me a way to break the chains; that I may experience the beauty of everything again in my own body. I crave new energy. Prayer and perseverance will eventually guide me back, I trust. Meanwhile I dwell in interior silence amid exterior beauty and await the promise. Let us open the door when the Divine knocks.
PRAYER
(Scripture)
The desert will rejoice,
And flowers will bloom in the wastelands.
The desert will sing and shout for joy;
It will be as beautiful as the Lebanon mountains
And as fertile as the fields of Carmel and Sharon.
Everyone will see God’s splendor,
See God’s greatness and power.
Isaiah 35:1-2
PRACTICE
A space of silence can be harsh, cold, and isolating. Or a space of silence can be warm, gentle, and compassionate. Spend time in your desert space noting the stirrings of your heart. Reflect on what might help your desert space bloom with compassion.
POEM
Flowering
Linda Buckmaster
At the Ruins of the Seven Churches, Inishmore
Pick a crevice
a homey gap
between stones
and make it
your own.
Grow a life here
from wind, rain,
and the memories
of ancients embedded
in limestone.
The bees will use you
for their sweet honey.
The rock will soften
under your touch. You will
draw moisture from fog
and hold it. Your presence
will build soil.
This is all we have
in this life, all we own:
a flowering
an opening
a gap between stones
for tiny tender roots.