Lent. A Christian season about practice, not creed. Belief in the virgin birth matters not. No, Lent only asks for the belief that a change in routine—taking on or abstaining—will
crack open life. And that it be done with intent and consent. This year my Lenten practices are two: daily reading of Teresa of Ávila’s The Book of My Life (translated by Mirabai Starr) and posts to this blog every week. This inaugural piece is a bit late, it is true. Funny how small additions to life are so tough.
My inner life has been fallow, like that field plowed my first day in France and then left untouched. It is a difficult state. The sun rises, then sets. In between is the commute, the meetings, walking the dogs, praying without words, making soup. Nothing seems to be happening, barely a weed of filler activity has even tried to take root. Teresa of Ávila wrote that the planting of flowers is not up to us. The Gardener, not the soil, sows the seeds. Sigh. I can only wait, inert and exposed, with the occasional dirt clods broken up or furrows plowed deep, wondering what and when those nearly invisible seeds might grow.
