Lent 2009: Day 42 (Holy Week Tuesday)

Lenten Journey through the Spiritual Alphabet
Psalm 119, Sustainable Love (Holy Week Tuesday)

Shin (part 2)
Lovers of your teaching have much peace;
for them there is no stumbling block.
I look for your salvation, LORD,
and I fulfill your commands.
I observe your decrees;
I love them very much.
I observe your precepts and decrees;
all my ways are before you.
*****
He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (Jesus) said to him, "Feed my sheep.
Excerpt John 21
***
On a very human level, this has been another crummy Lent for me
I have missed every special event at church.
I have wanted to be there with my friends, singing and having Mass
and Lenten suppers listening and learning from the various
speakers or mission programs, enriching my spiritual life with the brothers and sisters in my church community.

Instead I have needed to take care of my husband prior to and during and after his hospitalization which included two surgeries - one planned for, one not.
He would tell me “go ahead and go” but I couldn’t do that, he is a sheep too.

Now tonight I am missing the Chrism Mass with the bishop and all the diocese priests because I have a flat-out nasty miserable cold.

On a spiritual level, I suppose I am blessed with this sort of Lent. No matter what discipline for Fasting, prayer and almsgiving I choose. I can always count on the Holy Spirit to drive me into my own personal desert to meet the devil on terms I need to meet it on.

As miserable as I have been these last few weeks, and as miserable I am even now, I feel the space/the emptiness created by them misery. Now there is more space in me for the angels to come to me, more room for them to breathe beside me and with me, more space for them to do ministry to me. (I have had some wonderful blessings I will tell about later).

And the saints… I have gone back to some of my old friends and met some new ones. Theresa of the Little Way for example, I have not read much about her other than what is commonly known. I didn’t know she had a strong desire to be a priest, and great frustration because she couldn’t.

Through this blog exercise, I have learned to use the Holy scriptures, trying to look past the individual sentences or phrases into a deeper meaning for me and how the Holy Word is a reflection of my daily life and spiritual growth, and..how I am a reflection of It.

All this, not because I have the need to be autonomous and on my own, I don’t. I don’t want to be on my own.

I need people very much and have no problem asking for help,
(but sometimes with people “askin’ ain’t gettin’” to quote Pork from Gone with the Wind)

I need teachers and shepherds and friends and family though I can’t always choose where I am and what I am doing nor with whom. God chooses that for me.

I am feeling more and more how the gift of Jesus and his Spirit truly allow us to have real experiences of our Creator inside of us – particularly in pain – a slowness, an unhurriedness...a peace. I recognise it most when I notice myself "losing it" if that makes sense.

Ultimately,
my life – this one and all of its potential iterations -
is, first and last, all about me and God, and how
“we am” together,
I think that is the same for all of us..

Dear Heavenly Father,
please heal my runny nose,
and then lets talk some more about those sheep.
Amen
K