Lent@IPC 2022~ The Wilderness Speaks

As we journey through Lent, always both as individuals and within our faith community, we enter into Jesus’ story trusting that the “wilderness speaks.” What is your wilderness? Is it a great sky, black sticks left when the fire has gone out, the difficulty of presence,  averting our gaze?
Lent can be set aside as a time of deep listening, and also a time of contemplating what we take with us and what we leave behind as we journey into living as resurrection people.  As the wilderness speaks, it hears us into speech, into bearing witness of what we’ve heard.

Would you tell us a Wednesday night wilderness story?  We’re going to gather again in the Fellowship Hall from 5:45 – 7:00 for our simple Soup Suppers, with a brief sharing (10 minutes) from a community member. We’d love to hear from you!
Please contact Lynn Raisl (lynnellenraisl@gmail.com) or Cindy Caldwell (ccbirdnerd@gmail.com) if you would like to share. There are sign up sheets on the back table in the sanctuary if you are able to bring soup, salad and/or bread. THANK YOU!

Some ideas for sharing:  

-a time in the wilderness – however you define that

-a time you felt something new was written in the ashes of your life

-a time you heard the wilderness speak to you and followed or not

-a time you averted or did not avert your gaze

-a time you felt very present to the spirit ‘in the wilderness’

-what you have needed, or what you have chosen to leave behind, on your wilderness journey

 

The Journey

Above the mountains

    the geese turn into

        the light again

Painting their 

    black silhouettes

        on an open sky.

Sometimes everything

    has to be 

        inscribed across

            the heavens

so you can find 

    the one line

        already written

            inside you.

Sometimes it takes 

    a great sky 

        to find that

first, bright

    and indescribable

        wedge of freedom

            in your own heart.

Sometimes with

    the bones of the black

        sticks left when the fire

            has gone out

someone has written

    something new

        In the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.

    Even as the light fades quickly now,

        You are arriving.

 from David Whyte: Essentials

 

There is deep beauty in not averting our gaze.  No matter how hard it is, no matter how heartbreaking it can be.  It is about presence. It is about bearing witness.
Terry Tempest Williams