The Sweet Return (2)

Sometimes it takes darkness

and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Jesus, 

Its been awhile since I've read Whyte's poem. I found it again yesterday. No, here in my 40s I know better, it found me. Thank you for that. I pray that's the case these Lenten days; I don't want to follow some pre-formed course but rather have words or poems or thoughts find me. I know, I'll have to pay attention, stay a tip-toe. 

Maybe the poet's words are a facet of what Lent is truly about, a season of learning that 'anything or anyone that does not bring me alive is too small for me.' I can already hear somebody chiding me for focusing on my aliveness instead of your suffering. Lord, I'm so weary of that kind of that narrow world-is-flat theology that says there's some edge to you I'd best not sail off of. That sounds so incredibly arrogant, Lord, probably similar to Columbus' brass when he set sail for new worlds in his sweet confinement of ships and dreams...but oh the beauty that found him.

Give me, give us courage, Lord, coeur - heart. Let the darkness cover us, and the night wrap itself around us, for even darkness to you is not dark, and night is as clear as the day. May what or who we 'give up' this season be only that which is too small for us.

Bring us alive!

Amen.