Spring is breaking up the winter ground and the first of the garden flowers are peeking out. There are a great many things we either do, or believe we aught to do, with the changing of the season. Whether one changes the tires on the car, cleans the windows inside and out, turns over the ground in the flower beds, cleans out a nasty front hall closet or grooms the dog, we welcome in the new season with a flourish of activity. Many rituals have evolved over time. Some are handed down to us from family or friends. Others we develop ourselves. Each task either serves the purpose of optimizing functionality for the season to come or maintains order in our domain.
Typically, towards the close of winter, I crave a time of spiritual retreat. These times have varied in form and format but have typically included some form of solitude, devotion, fasting, prayer and journalling. My craving this year has been consistent with the past but, for a variety of reasons, I have not given time to my inner hunger. Along with the absence of this seasonal ritual there has been little or no evidence of my thoughts online. That these two matters exist together in the same space of my present life is not a matter of circumstance. I have been troubled yet fallen short of taking action.
That said, it is fitting that the quote below from "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a' Kempis reasonates mightily with my heart. The truth clamours within me to be heard.
Lament and grieve because you are still so worldly, so carnal, so passionate and unmortified, so full of roving lust, so careless in guarding the external senses, so often occupied in many vain fancies, so inclined to exterior things and so heedless of what lies within, so prone to laughter and dissipation and so indisposed to sorrow and tears, so inclined to ease and the pleasures of the flesh and so cool to austerity and zeal, so curious to hear what is new and to see the beautiful and so slow to embrace humiliation and dejection, so covetous of abundance, so niggardly in giving and so tenacious in keeping, so inconsiderate in speech, so reluctant in silence, so undisciplined in character, so disordered in action, so greedy at meals, so deaf to the Word of God, so prompt to rest and so slow to labor, so awake to empty conversation, so sleepy in keeping sacred vigils and so eager to end them, so wandering in your attention, so careless in saying the office, so lukewarm in celebrating, so heartless in receiving, so quickly distracted, so seldom fully recollected, so quickly moved to anger, so apt to take offense at others, so prone to judge, so severe in condemning, so happy in prosperity and so weak in adversity, so often making good resolutions and carrying so few of them into action.
"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." Rev 3:20
Stepping out for a seasonal ritual of the heart.
