We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
Sarah (Rosenau) Korf via Compfight
For those of you observing the Lenten season (and for those of you who are not), we thought we would share this poem by Jan Richardson.
Rend Your Heart
A Blessing for Ash Wednesday
To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.
Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.
It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.
And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you
to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.
Category: General
Tags: Ash Wednesday, Easter, Jan Richardson, Lent, Prayer, Repentance
Related Reading
The God of the Here and Now
Several years ago an acquaintance told me she and her husband were going to travel to Lakeland, FL, where a “healing revival” had purportedly broken out. When I asked them if they were going because they needed healing, they replied that they just wanted to witness “God doing stuff.” Even though I have nothing against…
Quotes to Chew On: Prayer and Finitude
“We pray as we live: in a sea of ambiguity. This is not because we are fallen but because we are finite. And we are inclined to forget we are finite. We ignore the ambiguity that accompanies our finitude, and thus we claim to know what we can’t know. We reduce the unfathomable complexity of…
Prayer When You’re Anxious
The following is adapted from a prayer exercise that Greg wrote for his book, Present Perfect. If you’re feeling anxious today (or even if you’re not anxious at all) we encourage you to spend a little time with it. As you read this, remind yourself that the only thing that ultimately matters is that you are submerged…
An Author Repents
In 1969, 19 year old William Powell wrote the now classic The Anarchist Cookbook. He was very angry at the time that the US military was pursuing him to fight in the Vietnam War. It’s basically a “how-to” book on surviving a violent government action against its own citizens. Today William is on a very…
Why God Sometimes “Can’t”
Greg continues his thoughts on sickness and spiritual warfare by addressing the question of why God “can’t” intervene in some circumstances of illness.
If God is already doing the most he can do, how does prayer increase his influence?
Question: If God always does the most that he can in every tragic situation, as you claim in Satan and the Problem of Evil, how can you believe that prayer increases his influence, as you also claim? It seems if you grant that prayer increases God’s influence, you have to deny God was previously doing…