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Hedged to a place that once was uncomfortable, the response was vital and vast.

Therein was the striving and the strife that carries me forward to an inevitably orthopraxy.

In that space lies the simplicity of profundity.

There alone opens the doorway toward blooms.

Life’s fading spiral oft is proceeds the abundance of beauty, but never seems to be complete without the pruning.

In this moment I laud life amid pruning, aging amidst withering, and colored blots stirring about it all!

off we go into the horizon of journeys,

we know this place; it’s all too familiar.

and yet we’ve never really seen it,

we’ve never fully tasted or smelled its Glory.

when will not knowing just be okay?

why must knowing be necessary?

there at the edge of Truth,

this is where our lives become.

a supreme game of chicken,

or a complete submission to fate.

either way we chose to see it,

there we shall go

Last night I was introducing the imposition of ashes for Ash Wednesday and God warmed my heart!  As I was approaching the lectern at St. James UMC, the phrase “journey” came to my mind.  In a split second I decided I would say to the sturdy gathering “We are calling you to a journey this Ash Wednesday.”  Then, the Holy Spirit reminded me “God is calling us to a journey,” and that’s what I said: “God is calling us this day to journey with Him; to journey with Him toward the Cross.”

Whether this was a quick re-evaluation of right theology or a split-second word from God (I prefer the latter), the Spirit of God was present in the place.  The imposition of ashes is a discipline that we as a Church do together but it’s God that is calling us to journey.  God is calling us to repent and know the Gospel.  God is calling us to be reminded of the painful reality that we are dying a physical death; God is calling us to die in an act of glorious tribute to our Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer.

Our journey to the Cross this 2012 Lenten Season (perhaps the one journey with God that we love to avoid) is actually an inevitability for each of us.  We shall all die.  In Christ we shall die toward resurrection.

For 40 days (plus 6 Sundays), may we embrace our mortality, may we repent of our sinful ways (both individually and communally); and may we be enlightened to the Truth that the God of Creation is making all things new.  He’s making us all new in Him!  He is calling us to this journey!

In Christ alone.

Tonight I begin sabbath rest – something that I have not had in three weeks.  The last day I called sabbath was August 4th, 2011.  That day was particularly a great day for me.  I woke up and cooked buttermilk pancakes, read the newspaper, mowed the lawn and read Bishop Wilke’s “Are We Yet Alive,” a somewhat depressing treatise on the denomination that I love (and believe has a wonderful, glorious future).

I highlight the details because, for me, everything done thereafter became a three-week blur.  Better yet, as the days went on, the blur increased and my attention to details became less and less perspectival and more and more moment-by-moment.  While our beloved Word of God is very clear that we must keep the sabbath holy, some of us clergy allow perceptions to rule reality.  In my case, these last two-and-a-half weeks were a space in time where I did what I thought was right (which may have actually been wrong for me).  In hindsight I should have taken a day off.

In all actuality I am better and more alert and focused with a day off.  Sabbath it essential and somehow I get tripped up too by taking it for granted.  At the height of the momentum of the French version of enlightenment, a ten-day week was attempted.  It was very quickly found out to be an epic failure and the seven-day week returned.  Largely because we are all designed for sabbath rest. When we don’t receive it, we become less aware, less responsive; less effective in our lives.

Tomorrow – I take sabbath.  Praise be to God!