{"id":64,"date":"2014-03-25T13:38:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T20:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/?p=64"},"modified":"2014-03-30T20:28:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T03:28:14","slug":"lent-first-clearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theprovinceofjoy.com\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"Lent: first clearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

O let all who thirst, let them come to the water.<\/p>\n

~John Foley SJ<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Living<\/a>This week as we move deeper into the Lenten season and our study of Parsons’ book, we’re called out into our deserts to look for living water.\u00a0 If you are like me, you may wander there often but remain restless and walled in by all sorts of distractions and routine, by circumstances you’ve told yourself are beyond your control.\u00a0 Responsibilities.\u00a0 A hectic job.\u00a0 Mortgages, car payments and college funds.\u00a0 Resentments and doubt.\u00a0 Commitments and promises and entrenched patterns, paths you’ve been walking down far too long now to ever consider changing course.\u00a0 These things affect your prayer life.\u00a0 They isolate you from your faith community.\u00a0 Maybe they stand between the person you’ve been and the person God is calling you to be.<\/p>\n

Believe me, I struggle with all of these scenarios.\u00a0 One of the most achingly painful passages from the Gospels for me is Jesus’ call for his disciples to lose their lives for his sake.\u00a0 I tell myself, I wish I could . . so easy for you to say . . . I’ve become a wife and a mother and a teacher.\u00a0 I carry the jars to the well and bring all this water to others.\u00a0 How can I drop it all and follow you?\u00a0<\/em> But when I sit here preparing this reflection, it becomes blazingly clear that all of these things we tell ourselves — the things that make us busy or unworthy or stuck in one way or another — are impediments to the joy, peace, love and understanding God offers us if we only let them go.\u00a0 If only we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit continually calling us to conversion.\u00a0 To change.\u00a0 This, to me, is the Lenten journey.\u00a0 Calling me to not only purify my heart, but change my thinking and develop new patterns so that I see myself and my relationship with God anew.\u00a0 I know that all things are passing, and with patience and prayer, with faith and the hope that resides in the perpetual passing of time, we are in a constant state of becoming the person God calls us to be.\u00a0 In the midst of your wilderness, then, listen . . . and you will hear God’s voice beckoning you to let go and come to the water.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if anybody can be converted without seeing themselves in a kind of blasting annihilating light, a blast that will last a lifetime . . . . I don’t think of conversion as being once and for all and that’s that.\u00a0 I think once the process is begun and continues that you are continually turning toward God and away from your egocentricity and that you have to see this selfish side of yourself in order to turn away from it.\u00a0 I measure God by everything that I am not.\u00a0 I begin with that.<\/p>\n

~ Flannery O’Connor The Habit of Being<\/em><\/p>\n

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Behold, I make all things new ~ Rev 21:5<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What are you clearing away this week?\u00a0 How are you nurturing your prayer life?\u00a0 Is there something standing between the person you\u2019ve been and the person God is calling you to be?\u00a0 Parsons writes, What change would make life feel a little more open and free, more relaxed, trusting and faithful?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In other words, how are you clearing space and turning toward God?\u00a0 <\/em>We are thirsty for this relationship but for lack of a better metaphor, we can get mired in wilderness, wandering in the desert with a half empty cup.\u00a0 Lent is our annual invitation to make room.\u00a0 To let some things go and come to the water.<\/p>\n

To the thirsty, I will give a gift from the spring of life-giving water.<\/p>\n

~ Rev 21:6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Parsons reminds us that we often build up defenses around our hearts, defenses we’ve developed to protect our soft centers but that keep others out, including God.\u00a0 What kinds of defenses?\u00a0 Well, you know them.\u00a0 Anger.\u00a0 Resentment.\u00a0 Fear.\u00a0 Doubt.\u00a0 Isolation.\u00a0 Distraction.\u00a0 Denial.\u00a0 These, she says, have served us well, but Lent is a time to break open our hearts and reveal the vulnerabilities these defenses mask: by clearing space, we open a tender spot that we had closed off, and we offer it to God for healing.
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Our time together with Parson\u2019s book also coincides with the beautiful Gospel story of The Samaritan Woman at the Well<\/a>, who encountered the living God quite unexpectedly while doing her daily chores.\u00a0 Let us not forget, either, that the unnamed woman was an outcast, forced to fetch water in the sweltering heat at midday when she knew she would not have to face the judgment of others.\u00a0 Living with fear and shame for things she had done and no doubt accustomed to being shunned and ignored, she is caught by surprise when the stranger speaks to her there and asks her for a drink.\u00a0 We know she gets much more than the water she came for, for she leaves her jar at the well and runs to share her story with others.<\/p>\n

The encounter between Jesus and the unnamed woman offers something of an icon of the Lenten season and the invitation it extends to us. If we give ourselves to a daily practice, if we keep taking our vessel to the source even when we feel uninspired or the well seems empty or the journey is boring, if we walk with an openness to what might be waiting for us in the repetition and rhythm of our routines, we may suddenly find ourselves swimming in the grace and love of God that goes deeper than we ever imagined.<\/p>\n

~Jan Richardson “A Well-Blessed Woman”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Use these questions to reflect on your own Lenten Journey.\u00a0 If you feel comfortable, share your stories by leaving a comment.<\/p>\n

In what way(s) might the story of the Samaritan woman\u2019s encounter with Jesus at Jacob\u2019s well mirror your own spiritual journey, especially during this Lenten season?<\/p>\n

\u2022 What are you thirsty for and how are you clearing space this Lent to bring yourself to the well for living water?<\/p>\n

\u2022 How might you bring this water to others?<\/p>\n

\u2022 Where this week have you heard God\u2019s voice breaking through?<\/p>\n