A Daily Lent

The Long Way Home Wednesday after the Resurrection – April 15, 2020 Spiritual growth does not come in a moment . . . in a flash of insight . . . or by responding to an altar call . . . or in an inspiring conference . . . or even in an act of kindness that creates good feelings within us. Spiritual growth is a long, long journey. We grow day-by-day, moment-by-moment, the slow accumulation of long-term openness to God’s work within us. I’ve known persons who expected transformation to come in a flash, and who quickly grew frustrated when they did not get the immediate results they expected. The spiritual life is a journey of our entire lifetime. We never come to the end of it. This is the work God is doing within us slowly, moment-by-moment. In the excerpt below, Evelyn Underhill talks about spiritual growth. We talked first of growth and then of service, but we must not divide them too sharply, for the two go together from the beginning. In a good nursery, children are ta...

The Stillpoint Within Tuesday after the Resurrection – April 14, 2020 We are challenged, currently, to be creative, to find different ways to love people. Often, since we have been distanced from one another by the coronavirus threat, we have been told that for right now, we best love people by staying away from them. (And all the introverts say, “I’ve been telling you this for years!”) We make phone calls . . . we use FaceTime . . . try to serve, while maintaining proper distancing. And we pray. We pray for people, if only by whispering the names of those we know who are in need . . . speaking aloud the names of hospitals . . . saying the names of cities and towns that are overwhelmed . . . We meditate . . . we find some contemplative practice to keep us centered and anchored . . . we quietly write poetry . . . we take out a sketchpad and draw or use pastels to doodle or splash some watercolors on a page . . . we regularly drop anchor through a meditative prayer practice (...

The Swinging Pendulum Monday after the Resurrection – April 13, 2020 During these days of physical distancing in public and separating ourselves from others in the run of daily life, we can feel out of balance. I know there are mental health concerns related to being socially apart from others over an extended period of time. But also as I hear more and more about how uncomfortable people are over the upset of routines and the forced aloneness of staying at home, I wonder if these days of enforced-slowing-down are not a corrective to our overly busy, frantic lives. I’ve often thought that when our lives are out of balance, when the pendulum has swung too far in one direction or another for us, the corrective sometimes comes in an exaggerated swing back in the other direction. An exaggerated swing that seems excessive may serve only to bring us back to the center. Evelyn Underhill quotes the 14th century Flemish mystic, Jan van Ruysbroeck: Ministering to the world without i...