Monday, February 18, 2013

The Lenten Journey

Atacama desert, Chile
I don't often think "Road Trip" when I think of Lent, but this year as these 40 days get underway, I am tingling with an urge to simply GO. Not that I have a destination or even a particularly conscious reason, but there is a part of me just ready to shoulder the bag and be gone, roaming. Roaming, writing, praying, doing, sharing, with God, with and for others...




Some conversations I have had during these last weeks also leave me perched with a readiness...conversations about the possibility of putting together a book...others about what I will do in the summer...about my work as a translator...about notions of home and discernment and freedom and yes and being open and the will of God.

Of late, I have dreamed of parachuting, of flying, of travelling.  I have dreamed of walking and photographing and leaping.

Yet, I am here, called to be librarian, community member, friend... but, inside...I am called also to be a little bit in the looseness of there.

And also called to the desert... Hm, perhaps that is where the two places meet... in the thinness of the veil that gently falls in the openness, uncluttered by what is not essential within or without.

As this wonder is ignited by the warmth of the Spirit alive and dancing, lines from verse by Mexican poet Enrique González Martínez bloom with light.

Sólo tres cosas tenía
para su viaje, el romero:
los ojos abiertos a la lejanía,
atento el oído y el paso ligero.

The one who roams/ had but three things for the journey: / eyes open to the distance/ an attentive ear/ and a light step.

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