Most of us are familiar with the story of Cinderella, a tale that’s been around in one version or another since the 6th century. Before she got to dance with her prince she spent a lot of time sitting in the ashes. Maybe this is the theology of Lent; before we can be transformed we have to sit in the ashes.
I’ve never actually sat in ashes, but I’ve seen what a bushfire leaves behind; blackened space, mile after mile, hill after hill. There are no places to hide and nothing to do, just empty, unwelcoming and forbidding space.
If you have ever been alone for a day or two in an Australian wilderness or desert space without people or social media to fill up the empty space you will know what I mean. The only excess baggage you carry with you is the hidden stuff, the issues you keep under wraps, the experiences or words that make you cringe, the questions you do, but don’t, want answered.
Sometimes Jesus spent time alone in the Judean desert that lies east of Jerusalem and the West bank and west of the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea, a landscape that right now is caught up in an ongoing war. Every time he went alone to a quiet space it was to take stock, to recognise the temptations that he faced, to freshen his connection with God before picking up the ordinary of his life as an itinerant preacher at the head of a small band of disciples.
The season of Lent is not just about hot cross buns or fish on Friday, as my local supermarket would have me believe, but a time to remember that inside me, and you, maybe buried in ashes or lost in a personal wilderness, is a place of struggle. To pray from that place all we need to do is to simply and honestly recognise what is happening or not happening in our life and tell God how that is.
This Lent why not timetable a handful of times or spaces and set them aside as ME time. Walk, run, swim or play music, or weed the garden and as you do, turn your inner self space into God time. Reflect on a memory, a hurtful experience, buried dreams or possibilities ; anything that’s currently taking up space in your thinking.
Alternatively you might consider dipping into Everyday Mystics, letting one of its themes or chapter headings catch your interest and quietly mulling over any implications its words might carry for you.
Everyday Mystics was written from my belief that the mysterious living spark that each of us brings into the world is a God spark, and it never stops flickering. Long past Lenten words, rituals and prohibitions as well as other religious experiences and beliefs, can inadvertently smother this link. Everyday Mystics endeavours to link what is timeless in human development with a Christian spirituality that might feel at home in our twenty first century.
Everyday Mystics is available for sale from the online bookstore, Blurb Bookstore.
To order your copy click on the following link:
https://au.blurb.com/b/11871252-everyday-mystics
Judith (judith@judithscully.com.au)
Words From The Edge 