ME19four: life, faith and role-playing games: Approaching and Entering Lent

ME19four: life, faith and role-playing games

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Approaching and Entering Lent

So, it's Ash Wednesday. The day that I, like so many, start some degree of discipline, and then like so many, never quite seem to complete. This year I'm trying to bend my body to my will with a much needed alcohol fast.... and if that's not hard enough I've even gone on a diet!

I must admit, however, that neither seem particularly "spiritual" (except the lack of gin, that is!) I'd like to say I will do more serious devotional/theological reading, but I'm not sure. I do, in truth, have an incentive though. I've seen a rather fetching University Chaplaincy job... (Read as: "God, I want it and I want it now!)

However, until I'm ready to disclose more, here's a little culture. Another of David's poems, no less:

Approaching Lent

For some reason I am attracted

to the shadows of tracery and arches

stretching further across the cloister

as the wintry sun waxes more strongly.

It’s as if something beyond my grasp

has laid down a pattern

that models a way to go,

like the lives of the saints.

But is this way process or progress?

And year on year the pattern repeats

and the pain of missing the mark

is all too apparent.

But that’s the view from here,

from ground level.

I take comfort that Christ,

fully our pattern and full likeness of God,

has gone this way before.

(C) David Grieve 2007

Labels: Faith, Life, Poetry

¶ 2:25 pm

Comments:

Thank you for the poem, Stuart...As to Lent, I'm also in a less than great place in life (not ministry issues...that bit's fine!)and my spir dir has told me just to try and find space to be loved by God as often as I can during Lent. It strikes me that something of the same sort might not be bad for you either.
I'm doing "Love Life..." too, but that just feels fun!
Blessings for Lent, anyway

# posted by

Kathryn : 4:43 pm, February 21, 2007

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