Bc this is Lent, and Lent 2016 is what led me to the moment I am in now, I’ve had a few memories pop up.

One is a Richard Rohr meditation I read when I was in the midst of my agony but savoring and ingesting every healing word that was coming abundantly my way. In this meditation it talked about the desire for God I was having, and I was. It said that desire that feels like intense craving you are feeling for God is how God is feeling about you. It was stated more eloquently than that, but at that moment I felt my breath change. There was an ease about it. My eyes saw more clearly too. The world did not look like cruel place I was experiencing anymore. God and I had a mutual relationship and we adored each other. Still do.

When I read the Hebrew Scriptures, I have a lot more compassion for the Israelites. Oh, I remember the feeling of God has chosen me. To God I’m really something and this makes me feel so special. We all need to feel this—especially when we’ve been invisible and/or when our encouragement has come from what we do and not the miracle that we are.

I was listening to Jonathan Martin’s sermon this morning from Ash Wednesday. “Go where the hunger is”. What brilliant insight to see that Peter, in Acts 10, did not see a vision that was revealing something new to him when he was full. He was hungry and food was being prepared.

Lent is not about giving things up for the sake of giving it up. It’s finding the parts where we are full. Where we might not hear something new bc we have no need to hear it.

I highly recommend you read Jan Richardson’s “Blessing the Dust”—a Blessing for Ash Wednesday. It is beautiful. Here is the ending.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.