Ash Wednesday
The body, the blood
Receive what has been given
All will be made new
Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I think we can all agree we are weary. In body and in spirit. These words give us life and refresh our soul in the wilderness. Lent is the 40 days observed from Ash Wednesday to Easter. It is a season carved out on the church calendar to meditate and reflect on the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before his public ministry began. It breaks through ordinary time and invites us on a journey of stripping away the excess, quieting the distractions, and instead, leads us on a path of repentance and renewal where we truly find our rest in Christ alone.. Lent is one of the unique liturgical seasons where we intentionally incorporate the body as part of our observance, most commonly through fasting. The gospel of Christianity is an embodied message. The very core of our salvation is the Incarnation. Our assurance of faith rests in the belief that he walked in our midst and abides with us now through his death and resurrection. We seek to live out our daily lives attempting to make this an embodied reality in the here and now; Emmanuel, Christ with us. Christ came to show us that love has a body and our body is a part of our spiritual formation.
John 1: 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
To lean into this more deeply, I’ve written a new Lenten series titled, Lent Through the Body.
I invite you to journey with me through reflections on Christ’s experience in the wilderness. We often look to outside circumstances to place blame for our suffering but the wilderness is most often first inside of us. This experience is designed to be an intentional time of embodied spiritual practices that lead us to deepening our listening and awakening our hearts through the very vessel He’s given us to live out our days on this earth.
Psalm 34:8 calls us to “ Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.”
Each week will include a scripture meditation and an embodied practice followed by journal questions as well as the incorporation of art, poetry, and movement prayer prompts. The schedule is as follows:
Week 1 Lent through Breath
Week 2 Lent through Fasting
Week 3 Lent through Embodied Prayer
Week 4 Lent through Embodied Worship
Week 5 Lent through Writing
Week 6 Lent through Walking (Holy Week)
Through these reflections we will press into the wilderness of our souls with our hearts and bodies postured toward surrender to what God wants to reveal to us and renew in us.
As we begin with the ashes, we recognize them as a symbol of a burning up of what once was. But may we not forget that God wastes nothing. The ashes left after a refining fire can become the fertilizer for new growth. The ashes placed upon our foreheads also remind us that the journey may get uncomfortable. Throughout these next 6 weeks we will be tending to the soil of our souls and allowing God to reveal new growth to spring up in the wilderness. (Isaiah 35:6)
Weekly Scripture Meditation:
Romans 12:1-2 - “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (The Message translation)
Embodied Practice: place a hand on your chest, feel the rise and fall of your breath, listen to the sounds around you as you contemplate the journal questions.
Journal Prompts: we begin our embodied journey by asking
Where do I need God most?
What am I truly hungry for?
Haiku poem by Libby Johnson
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