Lent started on Feb 13, but I hardly noticed. I was working hard to to launch a new website, and I was sick besides.
On a Sunday in late February, I took a long walk from my house into the Berkeley hills, alone and without my phone. I was struck that Lent — which I typically associated with self-denial, introspection and sobriety — was a gift. It is a gift to be called into quietness, to remember that we are limited and God is limitless.
I am reading A Timbered Choir: Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry. Here’s his opening poem:
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
Bora's Notebook 