‘I restore myself when I’m alone’.
Marilyn Monroe

Lent – not only a time in our journey for preparation, but also a time for restoration.

During some preparation for an essay on transition I came across this quote which really hit me, particularly in my Lenten thoughts:

To become something else you have to stop being what you are now; and to develop a new attitude or outlook, you have to let go of the old one you have now.

ref:William Bridges ‘Transitions’

Before a new beginning, an ending is necessary.

I have been thinking some more on Jesus being the ‘Bread of Life’.

For me bread is not the life sustaining food that it was in the time of Jesus. If I were to think of Jesus in this way he would not be some one who sustained me, but merely someone I encountered at breakfast time … toasted!

For me, Jesus is ‘the oxygen of my life’, the very thing, and the only thing, that not just keeps me going … but gives me life!

Staying with the Irish theme today of St Patrick’s day these words of Elizabeth Bowen have also been a challenge and comfort in the repetitiveness of the desert.

Experience isn’t interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

It’s been an interesting week – in many ways a bit of a desert week which is quite fitting for the season of Lent.

This week I assisted at my first burial and I was surprised by how draining the experience actually was. The grief of those present was obviously natural, but also quite tangible. It is not often, I guess, that you go to a funeral of someone you do not know. So other funerals I have been to I have been sad and expected to be so; I guess it was a bit of a surprise to feel ‘grief’ with the family at the graveside.

The desert experience has also been added to this week with the need to produce a sermon for Sunday. A desert is quite a sparse place and creativity has been lacking from my week (as shown by a lack of blogging and a fairly empty faith book for this week).

During the week I have felt some resonance with, and enjoying thinking on Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Desert Has Many Teachings I have particularly drawn from this due to the difficult deserty wilderness experiences that Mechthild of Magdeburg experienced as a result of writing such stuff.

In the desert,
Turn toward emptiness,
Fleeing the self.

Stand alone,
Ask no one’s help,
And your being will quiet,
Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,
Endeavor to free them;
Those who are free, praise.

Care for the sick,
But live alone,
Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,
To kindle Love’s fire
With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert

The desert is an interesting space making environment.