Homeward Bound

Maybe the Wrong Way is Really the Right Way

These were men who believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster.
Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

A LITURGY OF PRAYER

Opening Meditation

Sit for a moment with this invitation and promise.

Therefore, I will now persuade her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
From there I will give her vineyards,
and make the valley of trouble a door of hope.

Hosea 2.14

1^st Reading

Matthew 4.1-11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.

The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” ’

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” ’Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’

Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Reflection.

There was a man driving down the M4 one day. Traffic was slow and he was feeling discouraged. Wondering what was happening, he tuned into a radio station reporting the traffic. Avoid the M4 near Junction 17, it announced, there is a car going the wrong way down the westbound lanes.

Astonished, he peered through his windscreen and exclaimed: More than one - hundreds!

I love that joke. It’s so wonderfully disorienting.

Just who is going the wrong way?The obvious answer is the man. But wait. The man in that car might have been John the Baptist. Or Jesus. Or it might be any of us - if we were to take this Lenten journey seriously…

But before we look at the challenge of driving the wrong way down the motorway, we’d better take stock. What fuels our intention this Lent? As we steer our way, yet again, in the direction of Holy Week, what will keep us going despite the inevitable head-on collision of Good Friday?

Here’s another story - this one true: One day a small child approached his mummy and said, I want to be with the new baby by myself. His mummy smiled and, notwithstanding her slight anxiety, escorted her little darling into the baby’s room. Leaving the door slightly ajar, just in case, she overheard the child bend down and whisper in the baby’s ear, Remind me about God, I’m beginning to forget.

This is why we make the Lenten journey, ultimately: to remember who God is; to remember who we are; to return to Love and to deepen our experience of it. It was the reminder of Jesus’ greater destiny – given to him as he emerged from John’s Jordan not long before - that led him on. It was his identity as God’s Beloved that gave him direction and strength.

If we choose to go against the flow of traffic this Lent - against the movements of our reactivity or impulsiveness or apathy - if we choose, instead, to let the Spirit drive us into the wilderness, we do so because it’s in the direction of home.

This lent, I’m going to try to put strict limits on my use of technology. I don’t tell you this so that you can admire my virtue. On the contrary, I tell you because it is rather humbling to have to admit how really difficult it will be. I know I’m not alone. We belong to an addictive society, and it is very difficult to drive the wrong way down that motorway. But Lent is a chance, once more, to head towards God’s better life - and that will mean going against the general direction of travel, whatever that might mean for each of us.

If I succeed even a little, it won’t be because of my determined willpower – which quite frankly is very weak – but because of a vision for better things. And because of the amazing experience of grace that always comes to support us when we allow ourselves to struggle towards greater Love, to make ourselves vulnerable, to turn around. Like Jesus, when we resist the temptations of control, escape, easy comfort or special status, the devil tries us sorely - but so, too, do angels minister to us.

At no point in the story does Jesus magic himself onto a clear road. During his 40 days in the desert, he sat courageously with all the conflicting voices telling him he was going the wrong way: telling him that if he really wanted success, he’d be better off going with the flow. Get status, get security, get fame, get power, get satisfaction, get a thrill, get a life, get with it!

Sometimes it will feel that we have nothing but a hard shoulder to get us by. Sometimes the shoulder is soft. But despite the narrow and sometimes difficult passage, our destination is well worth the effort.

And this is where the metaphor breaks down. Because where we are going is not, in the end, away from the world but into it’s deepest heart – to find, for ourselves and for others, what we need to be most truly human, most truly connected, most truly alive. So we make this journey not just for ourselves, but to take our place in God’s renewing work in the world.

The prophet Hosea knew this. Jesus knew this. The desert fathers and mothers knew this. They knew that the wilderness both confronts and consoles; it challenges superficial notions of who we are and what matters, and draws us into the compassionate heart of God.

Lent is a journey to the cross - the place where God meets the suffering of the world in solidarity - and beyond that, of course, to Easter and the kind of life that bursts forth even in the darkest wilderness.

What wilderness will you choose? Or, if you find yourself within a wilderness place - inside or out - how might you resist the temptations to either despair or escape and, instead, let yourself be wooed.

Because the wilderness has always been the place where God speaks most tenderly.

Therefore, I will now persuade her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her.
From there I will give her her vineyards,
and make the valley of trouble a door of hope.

Hosea 2:14

Widening the Circle
Giving thanks for the invitation to greater life, however you hear it today: take some time to extend a prayer for the tenderness and promise of God to reach the people in our world in wilderness places.

As you stand at the threshold of Lent, who in the world might you make this journey with and for.

The Lord’s Prayer
Heavenly Father, heavenly Mother,
Holy and blessed is your true name.
We pray for your reign of peace to come,
We pray that your good will be done,
Let heaven and earth become one.

Give us this day the bread we need,
Give it to those who have none.
Let forgiveness flow like a river between us,
From each one to each one.
Lead us to holy innocence
Beyond the evil of our days —

Come swiftly Mother, Father, come.
For yours is the power and the glory and the mercy:
Forever your name is All in One.

By Parker Palmer

Ponder and Pray
Silence is a sort of wilderness and therefore a very good prayer for the Lenten season. Might you make a commitment to some time each day in silence before God? Here’s another good resource for that.¹

How else might you be called to travel against your most natural impulses and reactivity and towards a greater life?

2^nd Readings

Deserter

Leave the path behind
and with it, the world.
Walk on rocks dismayed to dust
by sun, wind and time.
Go where the air covers your traces:
sand silting down like cinders,
like memories lost to fire.

Tread light to your name
and to your bloodlines.
Walk into the otherworld;
let it unshape you.
Go to the limit of what can be
known, or said, or sensed. Be still
in the eye of the darkness.

Is this a severance,
an escape from life?
You will walk with blind angels,
sit with those who are not
human, whose stories are secret lairs,
who bear the song of their blood
under feather, scale and fur.

One day you’ll come back
across the dead sea.
Your eyes will shine with strangeness,
the light of a wild star.
In your palm will be a desert rose,
a gift from the other side,
from silence, and the world’s end.

Steven Shakespeare

Blessing

And so may we walk into the other world and let it shape us.

May we find grace to go the wrong way which is really the right way.

May we dare the wilderness and strenghthen there our sense of who we really are.

May we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord and serve only Love.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, evermore. Amen.

Music:

Someone asked me why I loved Lent. Here’s one answer. x

1. Following the example of Jesus, these early Christian contemplatives developed the practice of reciting a prayer word or phrase to help bring the discursive (chattering) mind to greater and greater stillness and enter into silent prayer. Noting the direct transmission of this wisdom practice, the great fourth century desert father Evagrius says that Jesus, “passed on to us what he did when tempted… We must answer [tempting thoughts] with a verse from Holy Scripture’ – what is spoken of today a ‘prayer word’ or ‘prayer phrase’.

https://schoolofcontemplativelife.com/desert-spirituality/

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A QUIET COMMUNITY TO PRAY WITH THIS LENT:
A group of us meet every Wed evening at 7.15 online. Music, prayers, my weekly reflection, poetry and 20 minutes of silence. If you’re interested in joining us, please message me and say something about yourself.