40 day journey

these days it rains in the mornings.  a beautiful good hard and heavy rain.  a rain that keeps people inside. that shouts. that makes things still, that makes me sit still.  its a rain that i wish would stay all day and let me be in it. in the noisy quiet of it. but it doesn't stay. by afternoon it's a hot and sunny kind of beautiful, but i long for a good long rain and a fireplace.  that is the new englander in me who craves the seasons - who needs the change- the stirring up- the different- the time for falling leaves and raking and cold air and baked breads and sweaters and the smell of wood burning and apples.  the closest i get to it, are these cold morning rains.

yesterday was the feast of st. francis- that wise monk from so long ago.  he spoke many good truth- like this one:

“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home any who have lost their way.”
– St. Francis

heal.  unite. bring home.  that is what we are called into.  and  the reason we need to do those things- are because of  the broken- wounds, fallen, lost.  the truth of the world we live in and the task before us. 


lately  in what i've read or seen and in words spoken to me through others- i have been seeing my lack of healing, uniting and bringing home.  i have been seeing more of my wounds and apartness and lostness and it is calling me to a season of slowing it way down, of refocus, of moving a degree to realign.  i am seeing my motion, my need for that, my insatiability, my grappling. i am seeing my self distraction and my numbing and that is not how i want to live.

i want to live in my breath.  i want to live in a place of pause and waiting- not movement not need of busy and email and facebook and messages.


so i'm giving myself a time-out.  i'm taking a break and i have begun a journey, a 40 day journey.  i'm not going anywhere physically-and that is part of the point.  i'm going to sit in my life- to be in my life- but to be in it without needing facebook.  to be in it with contemplative prayer and collected readings and quiet purposeful space.  to be in it with anticipation with advent with a stillness and a discipline that i trust will lead to openness.  to healing. to uniting. to bringing home.  to mending.

today my reading was about love and forgiveness- which basically sums up God- pure love and constant forgiveness. it was about agape love- 

 "a profound concern for the welfare of another with out any desire to control that other, to be thanked by that other, or to enjoy the process."

wow.  what got me was the "with out the desire to enjoy the process."  that speaks to me of the work and discipline of love. of learning to love deeply and correctly and constantly- no matter what.  no matter if you get anything back. no matter if it hurts.  no matter if it's not fun.  no matter if there are  joyless seasons.

i have always had this expectation that i should enjoy the process of loving someone- and part of my angst in seasons with zoe have been about the unfairness of this- of feeling the struggle and challenge of love- of living the 'not enjoying the process.' 

but i want to change the expectation.  i want to practice loving better- loving selflessly- loving correctly - to loving in the apage way. to loving my family with my tone of voice and my time and my eye contact and my choices.

because this is the place to begin.

this is the how to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.

love and forgiveness. always, and even for oneself.