to get out of the rut, follow the beaten path (taking up old practices that will transform us and get us somewhere new)

I hear him say the words as if he's said them all his life.  One phrase following another effortlessly, like water tumbling over round boulders.  I wish he would have slowed down a little and let me take them in, along with the beautiful purple vestments and the way everything shone, even though we were thinking about ashes.

It was like his words were going swiftly over a well-worn trail, familiar and quick.  No obstacles.  He was making haste to proclaim truth and grace.

With a solemn kind of joy, he read:

"Ash Wednesday is a day for honesty, a realistic assessment of the human heart.  By tradition it is a day when we assert (unfashionably but rightly) the sinfulness of our nature, and ask God to "create and make in us new and contrite hearts" and many come forward to have ash placed on their foreheads in the shape of a cross.  But even in these stringent days of Lent there is a complentary truth which also needs affirming.  We may be dust, but we are dust that is full of mystery and that dreams of glory; dust (we sense) that is to be changed, transfigured, into God's own likeness." 

Michael Mayne, Pray, Love Remember.  1998

Today is the day of Ashes.  Ash Wednesday was not a familiar path for me; we were raised in the tradition that skipped from Christmas to Easter without much explanation in between.  But it is path I'm happy to travel; it is a signpost, something to guide our feet as we remember Christ's Way.  We link up arms and hearts with each other and with him as we decidely walk the path that has been walked before us.  The Lenten Path beckons us to recognize that this is not the time to blaze our own trails.  This is Christ's Way and we follow him.

I followed trails all over the farm we grew up on, near the edge of the spawling Alberta prairie.  On clear days, we could see the mountains, though it would have taken us three hours to get there.

Between the house and barns were stretches of wild grass: prairie fescue, timothy grass, wispy brome grasses and other easily overlooked stalks that bent quickly underfoot.  This farm my parents homesteaded in the late '70s wasn't around long before well worn paths showed the way from house to barn.  The outdoor animals had their paths, too, which were always stunningly narrow and randomnly curvy, considering the lack of obstacles between destinations.

I want to help us do this with our practices and our words, our thinking and praying.  Let's together trace old well worn paths.  Even if our lives feel cumbersome and unwieldy, it's possible for us to follow a clearly marked out path, the way old cattle with their wide bellies amble through tall grass on narrow trails.

Almost everyday I hear someone balk at the restraints of spiritual disciplines:  I get so sleepy... I don't have enough time... I don't know where to start... Been there, done that...   

I totally get it.  But blazing your own trail isn't the way either.

In some ways it takes more courage to let Jesus show us the way.  Courage to let someone else mark the path.

When we do it, we learn that not only is Jesus the way, he is also the sustenance for the way.  He is the bread of life.  And the light for the path, and the guide who knows the way to the quiet waters.

You don't have to do all this, but you won't know necessarily know what you're missing if you don't.

This is the WAY for us: dwell in the rich words of Scripture together.  Gather to pray, to worship, to be renewed by the body and blood of Christ.  Renew the old practices of fasting and setting things down in writing; commit the Word to memory in your heart of hearts.  

Will you join me in these practices?  Let's go together, making haste deliberately, as we travel these dusty, well worn paths, marked by all those saints and disciples who first followed in Jesus' footsteps, all of us in pursuit of mystery and of being transfigured from dusty, weary travellers to radiant, well-watered companions.

Stay tuned for posts on how to up the practices of well-watered thinking, journaling, and preparing for and receiving communion.