Highlights Broke 50km distance for the first time in 2019 Kept up my daily devotional streak, thanks to the CoE’s Lent Pilgrim app Completed a book! (James Clear’s Atomic Habits). Still behind on the year plan though Lowlights Habit streak tracking still patchy at best Finances ended up a mess - home improvements were unbudgeted for but perhaps add value to the house (not quantified though) Next Month Focus Area ...
For the Day 2 prompt, a poem about questions. \\\* What is this which zips around my ears, its sound like the deep hum of an old man hunched down, stirring up the sand. It shimmers in the morning light its back a splash of gold splayed across the sky, against which stand the silhouettes of great metal tubes bending to its will. What is this but the wind, which goes wherever it wills.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash. For NaPoWriMo Day 1. \\\* Fold your hands in quiet contemplation, eyelids shut, pressed tightly together, a wall standing tall between the harsh light outside and the quiet darkness within. Breathe, inhale the scent of home, bread and wine, blended into the memories of your youth, when Faith, child-like, bubbled free. You who have wandered seven hills and seven rivers into a far country, drawn by the lure of freedom but now have had your eyes awakened seek redemption. This is what prayer is, quietly heeding the call of the divine
Photo by Skitterphoto from Pexels, for The Sunday Muse Prompt #48. \\\* Maybe it was the slant of the light streaming in, slicing through, as it were, the haze of yester-year’s detritus; the half-drawn blind like a mind stretched thin between leaving and returning, a face half-turned towards the memory of lost songs hovering just beyond the reach of a quivering tongue, and this present brooding. Maybe this is what the burden of life is. To carry, buried deep within one’s heart, the remains of the songs of one’s youth; until in a season of re-memory, they all come back.
The next Beatitude begs the question what is righteousness, and how can we hunger and thirst after it? The Lent Pilgrim devotionals over the past few days have highlighted a few dimensions of this. First off from Romans 12:9-21 comes the idea of right behaviour, attitudes and actions which are in keeping with our Christian worldview. The implication here is that righteousness involves swimming against the flow, being truly counter-cultural in demonstrating love in spite of what moulds the wider world with its focus on personal attainment and looking out for number one seeks to press us in. The takeaway here is that we are to “overcome evil with good”(v21). ...
The focus for the last five days has been the Third Beatitude, Blessed are the Meek. Of the many definitions the Strong’s bible dictionary gives to the Greek ‘ praus’, two stand out - a disposition of spirit in which we accept His[God’s] dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting and wholly relying on God rather than their own strength to defend them against injustice – which both speak to an acceptance of his Sovereignty. The Lent Pilgrim devotional chose to highlight other elements of this in the life of Jesus the quintessential meek one; his humility in not grasping equality with God (Phil 2:7) and playing the servant, washing his disciple’s feet (Jn 13:1-15). ...
For Day 10 of The Church of England’s 40 Day Lent Pilgrim Journey Read: Romans 8:35-39 This week, the focus has been on the second beatitude: Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Today’s reading sets out the wider framework within which we ought to view mourning (and all the things that can precipitate it in our lives). Nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus. ...
Image Source, For The Sunday Muse Prompt #46. \\\* Petal by petal, life returns to this frigid vista each one a delicate splash of colour against a canvas, bringing life, the way blood revivifies a face just in from the cold. From things once dead, life springs again, reborn.
For Day 1 of The Church of England’s 40 Day Lent Pilgrim Journey Read: Matthew 5:1-10 Matthew 5: 1-10, or as more popularly known - The Sermon on the Mount - represents Jesus thoughts on eight ideas for an uncommon life. Thanks to the CoE’s Lent Pilgrim journey for Lent this year, I’ll be reading along and making notes on here as I can. For the (like me) unobservant, Lent is the six week period leading to Easter celebrated by Christians of a more traditional bent, with the focus being a time of solemn reflection and preparation for marking the death and resurrection of Jesus at Easter. ...
For Prompt #45 at The Sunday Muse. Image “Be Free” by Magic Love Crow. \\\* Line by line the silhouette of an angel rises up, phoenix-like, in the space where the prophet’s finger parts the sand. This is what freedom is- the delirious joy of walking away from the baying crowd, the space between the lines as alive as the lines.