Lent, Week Two

In winter,

leaf-empty oak trees—

their profiles resting

on blue-dusky skies—

invite a lingering look

over their lines, their stillness.

They ask us to consider our

souls, exposed to this wide world,

and to make space for coming

birds and their nests,

to listen for the wind’s hum,

and to capture light

as it makes its way

down to our taproots.

I have been reading *Gentle and Lowly* by Dane Ortlund (it’s my church’s yearlong discipleship book). And this chapter shares ideas about Christ’s heart for his people in ways I never heard or thought about.

I’m not that great at Lent . . .

If I start Lent at all, it is usually with a desire to stay focused on my Scripture and meditative readings and to find a way to enter into the quietness that leads up to sorrow in Passion Week and the glory of Easter. But I usually end up forgetting that it is Lent. Maybe it has something to do with the lack of decorations and songs around the house, as there are in Advent, that aids in this forgetfulness. I have read other people’s complaints of this and find their response to be helpful. This forgetfulness reminds us of our deep need of Jesus in every corner of our lives — those places where the light shines and shows off the clean hard wood floors and where the light exposes all the dust and dog hairs piling up in other corners. There certainly isn’t any room for “lenten self-righteous” (if that is a thing) in my life.

However, there are many words and images and songs for which I’m grateful.

At slower than a snail’s pace, I am reading and journaling through the Bible with the help of The Well-Watered Woman Bible Journal (it’s slow because I don’t get to it every day…). I just finished reading and journaling Exodus and have just started Leviticus. Exodus was such a rich read, especially reading and really paying attention to how God commanded Moses and Moses commanded the Israelites in the building of the tabernacle. Even though we know that this is a picture leading up to Christ, thinking about the tabernacle in the context of the Israelites in the wilderness, and God forming these former slaves to be his people, to learn what it means to be set apart from the rest of the nations around them, and to learn what true worship of God is and what is expected is fascinating. He was restoring them back to what it meant to be his people, as rooted in being sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he was re-storying them from how they must have still thought about being slaves in Egypt. (You can imagine how much I like that whole idea of restoring and restory-ing… whoever first coined that, bless them). Also in Exodus I learned that the lamp stands (that burn light all the time (Jesus “I am the Light of the World”)) in the tabernacle were carved to be like almond tree branches - I did not know that detail. So I looked up almond trees and they symbolize new life as they usually bloom in January and February. (Also van Gogh, influenced by Japanese paintings, used almond trees often as a subject matter. Yes, I liked learning this detail, too!)

Although I am only up to chapter 5 in Leviticus, my imagination has been enlarged, despite my cliched lack of excitement in entering into reading it (“how am I going to get anything out of this…”) But I have been rather taken in, among other things, by the command to keep out yeast in the bread for the Grain Offering. . . which got me thinking about Jesus saying to beware of the leaven of the Pharasees. . . . sin in our lives like yeast… but also how the kingdom of God is like a woman working leaven through bread…then thinking of Jesus saying he is the Bread of Life. No deep insight… I just like the pictures in my head and the connections.

If Lent is going to be anything for me this year, it will be a picture of what coming out of the other side of a storm and finding life looks like. (This time last year was pretty rough, and two years ago when I was discovery the side effects to immunotherapy and we were all starting lockdown.)

Last Sunday three sisters I pray for at our church (we have this “program” where people are matched with a child or children to pray for them through the week). The oldest received a believers’ baptism and the younger two covenant baptism. It was a blessing to see the whole family up there declaring their faith. Then when it was communion time, the oldest, having made a testimony of her faith, took her first communion. All it was such a sweet picture of what it means to be part of the body and family of God.

I’ve been spending time with various friends - making connections either by zoom, phone, or in person over tea. With what feels like ordinary head and heart space to listen to and to share life with people (like before cancer…), it has been good to look outside of myself into the eyes of friends. I’ve also spent time walking outside in the lovely weather. Ned and I went to see the snow geese up at Middle Creek, but missed this amazing event by a day or so. We got ice cream, instead. Another friend, Teresa, took me on a long walk at Chestnut Grove Natural Area—right up to a pinnacle where we could stand on rocks and look over trees and into the Susquehanna. Teresa knows the names of almost everything we saw, and if she didn’t, she had an app that could find out what we were looking at or listening to. It was such a great time. Lastly, some sweet time watching snow coming down, with a pile of books to read and Pevensie near by.

We sang this in church today . . .

Photos from this week… so many good shots and lovely things to pay attention to . . .

Spring

Ash Wednesday