Journey to the cross...

Ash Wednesday.

I intended to celebrate Fat Tuesday in the usual debaucherous fashion, but alas, I fell asleep at 9:30pm. So Ash Wednesday rolled around without the chimes of glasses chunked together or gluttonous feasts being gulped down.

Truthfully, I haven't decided what exactly to give up anyway. I have decided that it would be a good spiritual discipline to write every day, so be prepared :) Either in my journal or on my blog I need to more in tune with where I am spirtually and emotionally and writing will help me do this.

I also confessed to myself that all I really want to do is walk with people to the cross. With all the pain and lamentations that have risen up in my church community over the past two weeks, that seems like the best thing I can offer God... to walk with God's people, to make a difference simply by being.

I'm reminded of this poem that I have taped to the front of my computer at work, Tell Me... by Mary Oliver.

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean --
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth in stead of up and down --
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Journey to the cross.