Plentiful

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It’s the Sunday daylight saving time began for 2023. All the funny memes showed up on social media about changing your clocks so not to be late for church. Or how we’re losing an hour of sleep… and where did it go? But let me offer this perspective instead: we don’t lost an hour of sleep when daylight sayings time ends. We return the hour we borrowed in the fall.

The hour of lost sleep this weekend is in fact the balance to the extra hour gained when daylight savings time ended in the fall. The debt must be paid. So bleary-eyed, and still feeling it must be too early for church, we return the hour we borrowed from ourselves in the fall. All while usually forgetting to give thanks for the extra precious minutes of waking hours’ sunlight we receive in the winter months. Yay for the sun being up when I’m up and not when I’m trying to sleep.

Now this may all seem to be exaggerated enthusiasm – we don’t all live places where daylight saving is practiced or work and keep daytime shifts. We have electric lights now – what worry is the sun’s schedule to us? But stay with the metaphor for a moment.

Are we losing an hour, or returning what was borrowed? Or more correctly, are we losing an hour or investing an hour that will be repaid in the fall? Investing an hour to not be woken by the summer sun at 4 am? Yes, please! It’s a shift in perspective.

Much of my Lenten journey so far has been embracing those shifts in perspective. This week’s theme was around what I actually have time to do.

If I sit down to pray, but I’m just glancing over the words of my spiritual reading, rushing to get it done, I may have prayed, but I haven’t answered the call to be still.

If I fill a weekend with entertainment, an visiting and preparing for the fun plans of the week ahead – I am not working, but I have not rested.

Even sleep can become its own work, when I go to bed thinking, “I must go to bed so I can fall asleep by this time and fit in 8 hours of sleep before my alarm at this time – but if I pray before I sleep I must shift my morning alarm by 10 minutes.” Nickel and diming my way to peace. It doesn’t work that way.

So, not surprise then, that I have been waking each night 2am, 3am, 4 am… it’s the only hours of the day I haven’t penciled activity into my schedule. I haven’t planned ahead for those waking hours in the middle of the night. It’s as if my body has checked off it’s bare minimum sleep requirement or 4, 5, maybe 6 hours and is asking “what’s next?” It’s so much clearer now why God placed a theme of stillness on my heart for this year’s Lent.

Our priest preached beautifully on the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that He offers her living water so she won’t be thirsty again.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 13 -14 it’s recorded this way:

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

In response, the woman leaves her water jar behind and returns to town.

John 4:13-14

²⁸ Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” ³⁰ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Our parish priest highlighted this simple act of leaving her water jar behind and invited us to reflect of what we need to leave behind this Lent. Reminding us, that it may be good things we no longer need after being offered living water.

I knew right away what I was being called to leave behind the excessive scheduling – and more over, the sense of control it gives me. Doing more, scheduling more is not going to give me more hours of sunlight, or any greater control over the unexpected. Preparation is good, but I also need rest to be able to respond to life as it comes at me with all its unexpected twists and turns.

Like the Samaritan woman left behind her water jar, I need to leave behind the rigidity of heart that flourished in an overscheduled day. That way I can receive God’s plans with an open heart. If I believe, as I say I do, that I am relationship with the One who is Living Water – then I know the water is plentiful and it will quench my thirst. So I can put to the side the worries and unfinished business for the moment to create more space for stillness. God’s provision will provide for the things left undone. The time needed for the demands of life is plentiful when I’ve spent time with God first. The water is plentiful and the well does not run dry. Here in stillness is where I find peace.

An extra hour of sleep is something we leave behind with winter, knowing that the days are getting longer and sunshine will soon be plentiful again. Spring is coming! What else are you being called to leave behind?

Stillness

Pope Francis writes in his Lenten message, found here:

“During this liturgical season, the Lord takes us with him to a place apart. While our ordinary commitments compel us to remain in our usual places and our often repetitive and sometimes boring routines, during Lent we are invited to ascend “a high mountain” in the company of Jesus and to live a particular experience of spiritual discipline – ascesis – as God’s holy people.”

This struck me deeply tonight, as I sat down to reflect and write, in the 11th hour, as a treacherous sounding mix of freezing rain and snow crackles against my window panes. I have no strength left for an ascent. All my earlier in the day musings and grasping for the right journeying metaphor for this year’s Lent felt disingenuous. I’m not going anywhere, not in this still recovering body and not with this resting yet still weary heart. Yet, I knew there was a need to begin, a sort of journey of sitting still, of rest. To go into the desert to rest.

Jeses calls to us in scripture, Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Rest. As I feel out of practice and self-conscious, as if by stopping the flurry of activity I will be clearly seen and found wanting. No, our Lord sees me more clearly and perfectly than I can understand and He calls me to rest. To go with Him to the desert…

and stretch out my arms a feel the warm sun on my face…

to feel the cool breeze as night falls and tilt my head back to look at the stars…

to listen to the small, stirring sounds of the hidden life in this place…

to sit with Him in stillness and appreciate that He asks only that I ‘be still’ and ‘know Him’ for this moment

…even as the rain freezes on my window panes encasing me in winter.

There will be reflection, penance, heartache and healing in the weeks ahead as Christ unfolds a journey of intimacy with Him. But for this weary heart, one day is enough to begin.

So it is with great relief that I hear Pope Francis acknowledge that we “remain in our usual places and our often repetitive and sometimes boring routines”. I’m struggling to be still in the humdrum of routine, that the longing and unsettled part of my heart wants to break away from, while knowing that peace comes in being open to meet the Lord here. I can see a 100 things in my circumstance I would like to change, to heal, to set right, to try to pray away or …if I’m honest, to run from. Yet, my heart tells me to invite the Lord in to this place instead.

Stillness can be a challenging discipline to master. Stillness is what I am learning much about as I come up against my limitations. There have always been the day-to-day limitations of not enough time, not enough energy, etc. but this past year I have gained some new physical limitations as well. I’m trying in earnest to embrace them as gift. Now the invitation is to embrace stillness as a gift. And yet, strange and foreign to me like a desert.

In this stillness, my Companion is gentle and humble-hearted as I wrestle with my discomfort at being here. No need to rush ahead…we’ve got time here. Be still. This year’s desert isn’t far away or a long journey. Instead it’s one of going deep in to my heart. As before, I invite you along.

Never Far from Home

The are some wounds on my heart tonight as I sit here to write. I don’t particularlg want to, but I choose to because this blog has become a part of my Lenten practice. And there are a handful of people in the world who tell me they look forward to it.

This is my broken offering… my cracked clay jar… holding my greatest treasure – my faith.

With the pandemic, there are alot of options for Lenten reflection online. I can’t give God neatly packaged or even much theological insight, or hand you a perfect understanding of Christianity nicely boxed and wrapped with a bow. Or even write you a summary or top ten list. Others would try, but I know I can’t. But, I can share my faith with you… little by little, a story at a time. And if you are still here with me, or have just found this blog, walk with me awhile. This desert is a familiar place to us now.

I’m thinking of water tonight and the summer I worked on Kesagami Lake at a fishing lodge. It was a fly-in resort 45 km south of James Bay in Northern Ontario. It was a 12 train ride, a 30 min taxi and 1 hour float plane flight from anyone in the world that I knew. And yet, having spent a childhood road tripping throughout northern Ontario, it was familiar and felt close to home.

There were about 15 young adult staff who flew in for the 2-month summer season from all over Ontario, on from Nova Scotia. We meet for the first time on the train, or the float plane dock and lived and worked together for the next 2-months. Not everyone made it the full season – I was one of them. The isolation gets to you.

It a fitting memory for this pandemic time of isolation and physical distancing.

One thing we didn’t have for two months was mass or church services. I remember to this day the look on my grandma’s face when I told her about where I was going to work. As we chatted aboit what it would be like, she got up from her kitchen table and handed me her missalettes off the kitchen counter. She made some remark about how these had just come in the mail. There was no need for further explaination. She knew I would be homesick for mass.

And I was. I wasn’t the only Catholic or Christian who worked at the lodge that summer. After we “found” each other in the group, we’d gather early mornings on the dock and pray together. We’d pray for each other when one was having a tough day. They helped me discern that it was time for me to go home, even if it meant going home early.

In the most isolated, deserted places, God still gathers His children together.

We worked split shifts at the lodge, with afternoons off during the warmest an most beautiful part of the day. To catch a break from the heat, I would hike the trails in the shaded forest along the shoreline. I would prayer worship music through my headphones and pray as I hiked. It was that summer I was first introduced to the Act of Spiritual Communion. What a beautiful place it was to pray an Act of Spiritual Communion as the sun was dabbling through the tree canpoy, glinted off the butterflies and dragonflies, reflected off the water that trickled through the forest to find the lake and birds sang choruses of praise.

If I left early enough I could get as far as the beach in a cove up the lake, past the marshes. One Sunday morning, one of the fishing guides got permission to take one the boats out and 3 of us went to the beach We prayed and read scripture from my grandmother’s missalettes, and were church together on that been.

Church is whereever 2 or 3 are gathered in God’s name.

I share all this so that you may know what I know:

…although things may be different right now

…although church may be different now

…although you may not being able to gather for mass right or receive communion.

God is still providing, like He did through my Grandmother and the gift of her misselettes.

God is still present, as always, kissing you with sunshine.

God is still gathering His children, if we have hearts open to meet each other where we are.

God is making His home is your heart right where you are.

The words on my heart for this Lent are healing and rest.

Traveling through the desert means making a home each night so you can rest.

Enough with the frantic grabbing at what was before or will come next in this pandemic. It’s hard to sit with still hearts in the uncertainty. But that’s the invitation – Be still.

Rest.

Let God heal.

Let God make a home here.

Here – in my wounded heart – even if I don’t want to be here.

That is the gift of spiritual communion.

So I pray:

Lord, please come to me as I am, where I am. Make Your home in my heart. I wish to make my home in You.

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And lastly, I hope this beautiful song from Isreal Houghton blesses your day.

Feels Like Home – Isreal Houghton