Lenten Journey: Return Again

Thirty-five years ago, I was working at a Sears Distribution Center in Columbus, Ohio. I had left Oberlin College due to the confluence of a job to help run a congressional campaign and Oberlin withdrawing me because I couldn’t afford the tuition. The campaign job had ended in November but I was still withdrawn from Oberlin so I got a job loading trucks bound for retail stores during the Christmas shopping season. I had been living in an apartment on the west side of Columbus working second shift talking to other guys who were working second shift after a year or two of college. They all had different stories but the similarity was some twist or turn had brought them to this second shift job some years ago and this is where they remained. There was something symbolic about driving a forklift deep into the back of one of those trailers where you could barely see out to the right or left, only a narrow view straight out. Sometimes, it felt like being entombed.

I stayed at the distribution center past the new year but, eventually, the seasonal rush was over. It had been depressing going from the empty apartment when I woke up late in the day to the distribution center and then coming back to the apartment after midnight. So, even though I couldn’t get re-enrolled at Oberlin, I moved back to be close to my friends there. I got a job working at tree farm in Avon. One day, our job was to plant saplings. I sat on a trailer being pulled by a tractor, facing backward. Between me and another member of the planting crew was a blade that pulled the Earth apart. Another guy handed saplings down to us from the trailer bed. Taking turns, we dropped a sapling into the newly rent ground and watched the Earth enfold the young tree as another part of the tractor pulled the dirt back over the place where it had just pulled it apart. Returning the Earth to its previous form but now containing new life.

This season of Lent, we re-turn toward God, toward the Divine, toward the Holy. Why the return? As people of God, are we not people of God every day?

It’s about mindfulness, I think.

I walk this Earth but I don’t see the beauty of the sun every day. I see the glare of the sun blinding me from the line of traffic impeding my morning commute with the kids to school. I don’t hear the wind blowing through the trees or the rain tapping on the window every day. I hear the tv show or a song I’ve turned up loud on the radio. I don’t smell the fresh crisp mountain air or the smell of the Earth growing things all around me.

It is through mindfulness that I see the sun in its glory; that I hear the still small voices in Creation; that I smell the earth, the loam, the sweet smells of life. I smell the dirt which is my home because I am life also.

So, Lent is a time when we re-turn toward God, not because we are not people of God the day before but because we have become distracted and less mindful. We have been pulled apart and it is time for re-turning. We forget that God is with us and we are with God, just as we are of the Earth and to the Earth we shall return. We re-turn to God, to the Divine, to an awareness of the Holy that fills our senses, our noses, our ears, our eyes. We re-turn toward the vision that calls us to tend to the new life in us, the Holy in us, moving through us so that we may bless the world.

What will you be more mindful of today? How have your senses been dulled by the droning aspects of life? What is the new life in you waiting to be tended to so you can bless the world?

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You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com 

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