March 10: A Walk in the Wilderness

The Church of the Ascension Lenten Devotional

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It troubles me to write about what appears to be a trinity of disparate passages and yet how much they run parallel to my own life right now.

After living 37 years in NYC, I’m moving to the southern climate of Atlanta. I feel the love/hate of my walk in the wilderness of my life up to the present — perhaps like both Moses and Aaron, yet Aaron never made it to the Promised Land and then it was his time to die. (Moses too.) Hey, wait, after all that? Poof!

I wonder why there was such heightened fervor remembered in the beginning and only towards the end of this long trail of their lives. I wonder if it is also like that when you get a new puppy, a new friend, a new spouse — heck, in my case, a new City.

I wonder if I will have the heart to love others — or even enough food to eat.

I wonder if my friends will also not make it to the Promised Land, gosh all that after 40 years. I wonder how we have heightened moments of pain and suffering even within our short forty-day journey inward, inward into our own spirit.

In.

Can I just wipe my own slate clean and be born again — will I be saved from all this distress? Can I just skip ahead to the good stuff — I mean, the God Stuff? I wonder if the space between each word IS the Peace, which passes all understanding — the God Stuff indeed.

 

 

 

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In this week’s newsletter, Mother Liz celebrates Earth Month alongside Eastertide, noting how resurrection speaks not only to humanity but to “the groaning of the whole creation” and God’s determination to make all things new. She observes that when Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for a gardener, we glimpse the deep interconnection of all beings—and when we touch creation’s wounds with reverence and compassion, we meet God. Quoting Robin Wall Kimmerer, the rector reminds us that “when we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us,” and invites us to deepen our love and commitment to our fragile, beautiful planet.

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