And Lent begins

It officially began for me last night at a beautiful Ash Wednesday service.  In which my broken heart was broken wide open.

I cannot explain how the silence, the music, the haunting bells, lighting candles just filled me and exposed my brokenness in a very real and deep way. 

In the bulletin there was a reading by Joan - here is some of it

"To be invited to begin again, to be ready to start over in life, is what the practice of Lent is all about.  Then we are free to rethink everything we've done in life and everything we want in life and everything we've demanded from life and get down to basics: the presence of God and trust in the God of surprises.
If Lent is to be real at all, we must recognize that we are on a journey that twists and turns between what we were before and what we are beginning now.  There is no settling down.  There is only the call of the New Beginning where God dwells in the heart and takes all our fear, all our loneliness away."

I think  I became very emotional on reading this because  - besides living with a pool of grief within me - I am afraid as I am beginning a new life without Chuck.  There is so much to this newness that brings what i would call a free flouting anxiety.  As I sat in the church we sang the Taize song

Come and fill our hearts with your peace, You alone O Lord are holy,
Come and fill our hearts with your peace, Giver of mercy

We sang it over and over until it sang us.  And I had a sense of peace flowing into this broken and hurting heart. 

The blessing that ended the service was this:

Peace for the earth and her creature
Peace for the world and its peoples
Peace for our fathers
Peace for our mothers
Peace for our brothers and sisters
The peace of heaven's vastness
The peace of the ocean's depths
The peace of earth's stillness.
To bless us in this night
To bless us in this season.

That is the peace that I need to walk with during Lent as I live with a broken heart and into a new future.

This morning I read the three scriptures of the day.  The first one was Exodus 5: 10-23 - which was about the people of Israel groaning under the slavery of Pharoah.   Here is the opening veryse

So the taskmasters and the supervisors of the people went out and said to the people: "Thus says Pharoah, I will not give you straw.  Go and get straw yourselves, whenever you can find it; but your work will not be lessened in the least."

What struck me about this was the impossibility of the task before them and the constant pressure from the "taskmasters and the supervisors."  I thought about people who say they are "hard on themselves." - which is many people I know - including myself.  It is as if we have a "taskmaster and a supervisor" speaking words of criticism and judgment within us as we live our lives.  Many of us live with an inner critic that is always demanding more of us  - we should be better parents, spouses, employees, citizens.  We should eat better, exercise more, volunteer, take care of ourselves better, be more responsible.  Always not quite good enough. It is a form of bondage.

The next reading was Psalm 91   
"You who live in the shelter of the most high, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress' my God in whom I trust..
...for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone."

And the third reading was Acts 7:30-34 where Stephen recounts the events of the Exodus.  When God came to Moses in the burning bush he began to tremble.  God said
"I have surely seen the mistratement of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning and have come down to rescue them.  Come now, I will send you to Egypt.

I know this is simplistic but after reading all of these I thought we ultimately are called to rescue others from bondage - it could be literal bondage - like slavery, it could be addiction, it could be the bondage to the taskmasters and the supervisors who inhabit our minds and keep us from living the abundant life of grace.

All I know is that I live in a house filled with angels who remind me of God's protection over me.  God wants to bring me out of bondage - even the bondage of grief - as he prepares a new way for me.

Here is a blessing by Maxine Shonk

May the God of FREEDOM be with you,
liberating you from that which prevents true growth.
May your freedom bring sponteneity, creativity, and hope into a wounded world and may it open others to the possibility and promise of new life and resurrection.  
May the God of FREEDOM  be with you.
Amen