Lent and the Sacred Road

Time to write.  It is Lent. Once again we take time, intentionally, for examination.  To look into ourselves.  A free course online was brought to my attention.  One about Self-Acceptance.  Perhaps this is where to start. Maybe self acceptance is where we should enter into Lent.  At least try it one time.  Let's start with the Inner Critic.  you know, that voice that points out your shortcomings.   The one whose main job it is to make you feel guilty about excess.  Upstairs lies $350.00 worth of new clothes.  For Spring.  The inner critic is busy right now.  Selfish she says.  Other people don't have enough to eat.  Excessive, narcissistic she says.  I say back to her, I hear you and you are suffering.  People suffer.  I will figure it out .  It will be OK.  This isn't set in stone.  Things can be returned. Or other things taken out of the wardrobe and given away.

The music that plays reminds me of a time long ago, when the girls were little.  Grade school.  Going back to school at the Seminary.  Almost 20 years ago now.  Those days, the thought of further education in something that interested me seemed so limitless, I could do anything.  It was all so exciting and new.  The Seminary; it felt like some divine plan for my life was unfolding.

Self Acceptance.  Now, I see that is was good, but it couldn't define me.  My life is bigger than a degree in Theology.  My life is varied and richer.  Social Work, motherhood, alcohol, abusive childhood.  Grief, losing my Dad at age 6.  All of these things go into the making of who I am.  And now the Cantoring, helping in the 5th grade, Centering Prayer, running, hiking, gardening.  The Divine Plan has unfolded since before I was born, when I was only a thought or whisper in the Creator's mind and on the Creator's lips.  It will continue, this beautiful Divine Plan until the day I die...and on and on and on.

While my profile publicly is not so large as it was in Lockport or in the past, my inner work, my inner being, the discovery  of what that is, continues to grow.It is enough.   I am happy for this time.  I am perhaps happier and more content than I have ever been.  So much so that I am beginning to face some long held brokenness and that Inner Critic.  I am beginning to knit together all of the parts of me, disparate and varied, into a whole.

And so this music called "Sacred Road" speaks to me of a journey inward, to learn, to encounter, to heal, to acknowledge, discover, and explore.  All of many and varied parts and people that lay inside on this rich, verdant voyage I have just begun.