It's Lent

Listen again and afresh...
Listen with a wide open heart to uncover one word, one phrase that has been lurking hidden the whole time this past week.
Listen with imagination to see in your mind's eye these words come to life...

Now read these words with YOUR voice enlivening and embodying them.


Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Part of what is so powerful in Whyte's words is that our relationships are not only with those who share our DNA, but also the parts of our life we might call inanimate.   The soap.  The window latch.  The stairs.  The kettle crying out to you. 

The sights and sounds all around you as companions.

Even the screen on which you read these words as a window to another world.

To be human is to be in relationship with each other.
To be a person of faith is to seek prayerfully to live in right relationship.
Not just with those who are human but with the world God so loves.

In what ways might you tend the tender relationships with others and with that which is around you in these days?
In what ways might that open you to traces of God's grace?

May the love of God be with you now more than ever.

Blessings ~~