Category Archives: Lent Devotion

Is It I, Lord?

Posted on April 16, 2025 | Leave a comment

“One of you will betray me.” The question hangs in the air.
The followers look at each other. And back at Jesus.
This week, I will share a few voices from that evening as the disciples
ponder this alarming accusation.

SIMON

This is a meal of liberation, and he speaks of a betrayer? What is wrong, my Lord?
Here I am, your Simon. You are the one who bids us to joy and laughter. Such long faces!
This sobriety does not befit the one who gives us mirth and life. Being with you is just so much fun.

Before you, I never knew such exuberance and high spirits. My foot was heavy, weighed down with many cares. Now, I run lightly. I laugh until my sides ache. I no longer worry about what others think of me. You cut loose all the voices within that condemned and taunted me. Fear vanished. Every day is a new adventure. I once thought happiness was a dream known only to children. I hoped only for a good living as I grew old. Now, I have grown younger in your presence, bolder, and full of joy. Sometimes, I just can’t stand so much happiness and weep for its sheer beauty.
But, my Lord, come smile, lift the cup. My brothers, he must be joking.

JAMES, The LESSER

The wind blows through the open window.
Somewhere, an animal screams.
A wolf leaps for the lamb’s throat.
The hawk soars across the moon’s passive face.

So he is betrayed. Will the Earth note it? Care?
Will I, James?
Betrayal is the way of things.
Whoever said the universe is trustworthy?
Thieves and murderers wait by the roadside.
Lovers are unfaithful. Children deceitful.
I should have known it would come to this.
For a few moments, I hoped he could change things,
had begun to believe there was safety in creation.

Yet, look at me, a creature myself.
How many times have I been false?
How many times have I sold out, given up, turned
away in anger, disappointment, or jealousy, and given
those around me to the powers of death,
the beasts and executioners who reside in me?

I am numb.

Oh Christ, don’t let them kill you!
I came with you, believed
staked all I had on you.
Lord, it is I who am betrayed!

PHILIP

He sits there so calmly with his arms outstretched. I hurt to see the pain in his face. His palm is open, accepting. There is no anger, no bitterness, no revenge, no resistance. He is like a lamb going to slaughter. I see only great sorrow.

What kind of man would announce to his betrayer the knowledge of his treachery? He loses all advantage. He may as well open his chest to the knife.
What kind of man is he? How is it that after spending so many days and nights together, he is still somehow a stranger? Despite his commonness and accessibility, he remains mysterious, ineffable.

What am I doing here? How did I get mixed up with these people? I am in over my head. I never thought it would go this far, get this out of hand. Someone is apt to get killed. I want to run back down the roads and valleys, run through the crowds, the villages, along the shores. I want to run back in time and space to where the word betrayer does not hang like a noose over this table.

Is It I, Lord first appeared in 1986 in the Presbyterian Survey.

This liturgical drama was initially commissioned by Westminster Presbyterian Church in Topeka, KS

Copyright 1994 Loretta Ross. All rights reserved.

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Lent 2   The Body of Our Humiliation 

Posted on March 18, 2025 | 2 comments

 For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. It is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself. Philippians 3: 19-4-1 

One of the most painful experiences a person may encounter is humiliation. We do all we can to escape the possibility, let alone actual experiences of humiliation. You may remember a few occasions of humiliation and shame. These memories stick around.  Humiliation may be a moment of embarrassment or deeply soul crushing. 

Humiliation assaults our sense of worth and dignity. It signals the limbic part of our brain, which is self-protecting, and tells us to fight, flee, or freeze in the face of our disgrace.  

Dignity violations leave deep wounds. The scars of ridicule and scorn may disfigure us. Jesus’s choice to endure such humiliation is remarkable. He chose the most painful path, which appeared to be the total failure of his mission, to show his followers that humiliation is not the last word.  

Our culture has become a global forum of blaming and humiliating each other. We are hardwired to retaliate to such indignities. We have little appreciation of the depth and breadth and tender goodness of the human heart. So many times, it has been scorned, mocked, beaten and tossed in an alley. 

We seek success, wins, the “Greatest of All Time,” to be the best and the first. We do all we can to keep our failures hidden in filtered selfies and struggle to find our sense of self-worth.   

Who do we think we are fooling? 

Our egocentric experience is only a small slice of reality. This is why we need each other and to learn from each other. “Alongside the protection reaction of fight or flight, we are also hardwired for primal empathy, an emotional connection that fosters openness to others and is needed to take in each other’s experiences at the core of healthy social development.
Donna Hicks, Dignity – Its Essential Role in Resolving Conflict, p 23. 

Humiliation both challenges our innate dignity and opens a door to humility.  In the painful sacrifice of our egos, we are liberated from our pride and desperate need for esteem, control and fame. Here in the heart of our disgrace – we may discover new freedom to be simply ourselves, our raggedy, messed up, imperfect, beautiful selves. Here,as Paul tells the Philippians, our body of humiliation is conformed to the glory in the body of Christ. 

In your midst I will leave a humble and lowly people; those who remain will seek their refuge inYahweh. Zephaniah 3:12

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PESACH – PASSAGE, 2

Posted on March 29, 2018 | 1 comment

Pesach – Passage,  No. 2

This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungry, come and eat! All in need, come and join in celebrating Pesach!
This year we are here, next year we will be in the land of Israel!
This year we are slaves, next year we will be free men!
                                                – Haggadah, Gerald Garouste, Marc-Alain Ouaknin

The night we celebrated Pesach –
what did he say, what did he mean
“leaving”
and that we knew the way to where he was going?

I was trying to work it
out when another sea split open
not waters humping up like steel cliffs
but a great scythe slashing
through the middle of everything
and him falling, tumbling down into the rift

a passage
where there had been none before
death leering from either side.

I heard the soldiers coming,
swords clanking, down the path.
My lungs burned in the acrid air
eyes stung to see flames
draped from clouds in smoky sheets.

And while they dragged him off
blood blossomed
over the vast lintel and door posts
of the writhing world
and ran down quietly
like tears.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a slightly altered poem from an earlier series of lenten poems I wrote called, Love in Small Doses.  Pesach, or Pasach, also spelled Pascha  is Hebrew for Passover or passage. The verbal form means to protect and to have compassion as well as pass over. Exodus 12 -14; John 14-19

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PESACH – PASSAGE, 1i

Posted on March 28, 2018 | 4 comments

Pesach – Passage,  1

This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungry, come and eat! All in need, come and join in celebrating Pesach!
This year we are here, next year we will be in the land of Israel!
This year we are slaves, next year we will be free men!
                                                – Haggadah, Gerald Garouste, Marc-Alain Ouaknin

After we were passed over
we passed over.

When the waters split
drew back
a shimmering wall rose
seething strength, waves
smacking, spitting above us.

Some of us hesitated –
to weigh the odds
consider and debate.
Was it more magic?
Who was this son of Abraham
with his stave of almond wood?

Crippled from scrabbling straw in the fields
mixing mortar for the man
meeting his cruel quotas
we dawdled on the shore.

Others, children, especially, ran out
skipping over the coral
through the sea grass
past the shipwrecks
and green turtles
raising their mottled beaks, amazed.

We heard hooves pounding,
shouts, thunder of chariot wheels.
Death before, death behind.
Better to drown
than die by the hands of those bastards.

The kids, though,
did not flinch,
tossing up fistfuls of sand,
diamonds in the sun,
playing on the seabed
like shrimp.

We hobbled over,
leaning on each other,
fearful, fretting.
Seems when a soul is crushed
it takes a long time to rinse out the slave.

Though at Pesach, when we gathered,
it would all come back.
We would shake off another chain
see more clearly, sip
liberty like wine.

 

Mural from American Visionary Arts Museum, Baltimore, MD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a slightly altered poem from an earlier series of lenten poems I wrote called, Love in Small Doses.  Pesach, or Pasach, also spelled Pascha  is Hebrew for Passover or passage. The verbal form means to protect and to have compassion as well as pass over. Exodus 12 -14; John 14-19

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Leaning into Lent and Dancing All the Way

Posted on March 4, 2014 | 4 comments

Photo by Sheila Creighton Imagery of Lighthttp://imageryoflight.wordpress.com/

Photo by Sheila Creighton
Imagery of Light

Epiphany has drawn to a close and now we are leaning into lent, a word, which originally meant spring and referred to lengthening days. Most of us are weary of this harsh winter. Before we turn to lent, here is a final word from Epiphany, not unlike the long goodbye we are getting from winter this year.

One of the reasons I love Epiphany is because the word, epiphany, is euphonious, which means pleasant to the ear and fun to say aloud. Epiphany sounds like a soft whisper or a rabbit sneezing. There are qualities of this waning liturgical season, which offer good preparation for Ash Wednesday and the journey to the cross.

Blessed Are the Pure in Heart for They Shall See God

Epiphany
generous span in midwinter,
the season of showings,
promises to the swift and clear-eyed
no less than a glimpse of Divinity
high tailing round the corners of our lives.

Now that the trees and earth are bare,
the God we hunger for will dance naked
for those bold enough to believe
in incarnation.

God will dance wild
and free over the frozen land,
while we shiver in our veils
longing to see with faces
bare of illusion
bare of pretense
bare of guile
aching to see
with hearts stripped and clean,
as the maple whose slim limbs slice space
in great chaste swaths,
ordering emptiness,
chalking off a place on the floor of heaven
for God to trip the light fantastic
and leave us all blinded
by a graceful shimmy
rubbing our eyes, amazed.

Oh dancing God
create in us clean hearts
pure hearts
hearts scoured
slick and smooth
as a copper pot
that we may not miss one grande jeté
that we may see
Thee.

Twenty five ago I published the first issue of Holy Ground – A Quarterly Reflection on the Contemplative Life. Back then we called it Making Haqqodesh (Hebrew for the holy ground), I had just established The Sanctuary and thought a newsletter would be helpful as a way to stay in touch with the group of people supporting this new venture in ministry. I wrote the poem above for the front page of that issue. During this year, as we celebrate our 25th Anniversary, I will post excerpts from some of those early issues of Holy Ground from time to time

Here is a bit more from the first issue:

Our deep hunger for God calls out, hollows out, spaces in our hearts, in our lives, and in creation for a sacred meeting with the One who made us and is making us. Our willingness to go down into the emptiness and the out of the way places on the far side of the wilderness thrusts us and our need before burning bushes, where we behold our God and receive our mission.

One of our board members, Catherine Jantsch Butel offered this definition of holy ground:

Holy ground is that burning reality which can only be apprehended – which breaks into really – the present moment (mine or another’s) and which, surprisingly, disorders, reorders, rearranges, resynthesizes all my previous arrangement of Reality.

In twenty five years I have never come across a better definition.

In those early years before the resurgence of interest in spirituality, before the establishment of hundreds of training programs and curriculum in spiritual formation and spiritual guidance, and before the internet I had few models for the kind of ministry I wanted to do and faced many doubts. Yet I always found encouragement and support. Here are a few memories:

Riding across the Kansas prairie with a friend who was also a minister, who after listening to me hem and haw for sixty miles, blurted out, “Loretta, what is it going to take for you to decide that God is calling you to do this?”
Then she handed me a check for fifty dollars.

Preparing for the first gathering of Evening Prayers held in our dining room in my home, I nervously asked my friend, Cathy, “Do you think I am just being crazy?” Cathy looked me in the eyes and said, “No. Loretta, you are not being crazy. You are just being obedient.”

I also encountered warning. A priest asked, “How do you handle failure? These places always fail you know.” I was reminded that to be faithful to the gospel, the Sanctuary must stand in opposition to the world and that holy ground is conceived through the cross of suffering and surrendered love.

Murray Rogers, Episcopal priest and founder of contemplative communities in India and Hong Kong told me, “I am very suspicious of spiritual manipulation. These things take time, you know. You can’t hurry holiness.” He counseled trusting the Spirit, simplicity, and waiting for doors to open.

As you prepare your hearts for lent, what do you need for the journey ahead? The words of counsel I was given twenty five years ago offer me a useful guide for what to carry with me this lent. These are my prayer for your journey:

• An honest friend who will help you discern God’s will for you and offer tangible support.

• Obedience to God regardless of what others might think of you.

• Acceptance of failure and suffering as part of the journey of transformation.

• Simplicity and patient trust in God.

• And a pure heart, a heart scoured slick and smooth as a copper pot, that you may follow your dancing Lord all the way to Easter morning!

May this season offer you richness, astonishment, and a few graceful shimmies, as Christ transforms you from one degree of glory to another.

 

ballet slippers2

Help us celebrate Twenty Five years! Check out our new website, The Sanctuary Foundation for Prayer Let us know what you think. What would help you in deepening your faith and peace? How we can improve and best serve you for the next twenty five years?

Well,  maybe not twenty five, but so far I have had no signs from God to stop this foolishness.

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Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #10

Posted on April 1, 2013 | 3 comments

And we are put on earth a little space, 
That we may learn to bear the beams of love. – William Blake

wild geese

Resurrection Passion

Oh Spendthrift Love,
Oh Lay Me Down Love,
even from the tree
you coax: follow me.

Oh Love That Never Dies,
could I love like the pear tree loves
in heedless scarlet surrender
to the grey autumn sky?

Could I run breathless
bearing bright bouquets
across the fields to you?

Could I with mad extravagance
pour out all my oil
upon your brow?

Could I throw caution
to the wind and fling
myself  over the lake
in a flurry of milkweed
seeds and cattail fur?

Could we rendezvous
in every crack and cranny
of creation where you issue
in sweet tenderness?

Could I be held enthralled
by wonder unable to move
across a room for need to kneel
at every step in praise?

Could I place my palm
upon the surface of any cheek
and trace the contours
of grace with a finger?

Oh Love That Never Dies,
teach my heart to love again.
Teach me desire
that draws life from dry bones
like orange flames
leaping from kindling sticks.

Oh Way is Narrow Love,
Oh Take Up Your Cross Love,
teach me resurrection passion.

I’ve had enough of death.

______________________________

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Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #9

Posted on March 30, 2013 | Leave a comment


And we are put on earth a little space, 
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
– William Blake

Holy Saturday

Stop!
surrender
to
resurrection

new growth

______________________________

Note to readers:  This blog is part of a series of Lenten “short takes” on the themes of lent, which follow more or less the lectionary Scripture lessons for this season. Like a note you find tucked under the bark of a tree, a lozenge to let melt in your mouth, an amulet to wear around your neck, I hope these little reflections may hold a small dose of truth or comfort  or challenge for your life on the way to Easter.

I have noticed in my work as spiritual director that it is hard for many of us to take in the goodness and grace, as well as the challenge of the story of Jesus and God’s redeeming love. Perhaps we need to titrate the gospel. Sometimes a well- timed, tiny dose, carefully administered, may be what the Physician orders for our healing. And so slowly we build up our tolerance for love and more and more joy finds the faith in us through which to invade our being.

Dose titration:  adjustment of the dose until the medication has achieved the desired effect

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Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #8

Posted on March 27, 2013 | 1 comment


And we are put on earth a little space, 
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
– William Blake

 A page from a 14th century German Haggadah

Pasach – Passage, No. 1

After we were passed over
we passed over.

When the waters split
drew back
a shimmering wall
seething strength, waves
smacking, spitting above us

some of us hesitated
to weigh the odds
consider and debate.
Was it more magic?
Who was this son of Abraham
with his stave of almond wood?

Crippled from scrabbling straw in the fields
mixing mortar for the man
meeting his quotas
we dawdled on the shore.

Others, children especially, ran out
skipping over the coral
through the sea grass
past the shipwrecks
and green turtles
raising their mottled beaks, amazed.

We heard hooves pounding,
shouts, thunder of chariot wheels.
Death before, death behind.
Better to drown
than die by the hands of those bastards.

The kids, though,
did not flinch,
tossing up fistfuls of sand,
diamonds in the sun,
playing on the seabed
like shrimp.

We hobbled over,
leaning on each other,
fearful, fretting.
Seems when a soul is crushed
it takes a long time to rinse out the slave.

Though at Pasach, when we gathered,
it would all come back.
We would shake off another chain
see more clearly
sip liberty
like wine.

Pasach – Passage,  No. 2

The night we celebrated Pesach –
what did he say, what did he mean
leaving and that we knew
the way to where he was going?

I was trying to work it
out when another sea split open
not waters humping up like steel cliffs
but a great scythe slashing
through the middle of everything
and him falling, tumbling down into the rift.

A passage
where there had been none before
death leering from either side.

I heard the soldiers coming
swords clanking at their sides.
In the acrid air lungs burned, eyes stung
flames draped from clouds.

And while they dragged him off
blood blossomed
on the vast lintel and door posts
of the writhing world
and dribbled down
like tears.

*Hebrew (Pasach) also spelled Pascha for Passover or passage. The verbal form means to protect and to have compassion as well as pass over. Exodus 12 -14; John 14-19


______________________________

Note to readers:  This blog is part of a series of Lenten “short takes” on the themes of lent, which follow more or less the lectionary Scripture lessons for this season. Like a note you find tucked under the bark of a tree, a lozenge to let melt in your mouth, an amulet to wear around your neck, I hope these little reflections may hold a small dose of truth or comfort  or challenge for your life on the way to Easter.

In the abundance of words which inundate us daily, it is easy for the message of redemption to be buried under the latest disaster, outrage or scandal. Likewise the familiar stories and passages of lent may grow dull and trite to ears and hearts already stuffed with words. 

I have noticed in my work as spiritual director that it is hard for many of us to take in the goodness and grace, as well as the challenge of the story of Jesus and God’s redeeming love. Perhaps we need to titrate the gospel. Sometimes a well- timed, tiny dose, carefully administered, may be what the Physician orders for our healing. And so slowly we build up our tolerance for love and more and more joy finds the faith in us through which to invade our being.

Dose titration:  adjustment of the dose until the medication
has achieved the desired effect

Related articles

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Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #7

Posted on March 22, 2013 | 4 comments


 And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
– William Blake

 Palm Fanfare

Passion Sunday

They fought on the way to church
this time ugly.  

Was it the tone he took,
or her throbbing resentment
that kicked in the door
like a demon repo man
turning up to repossess their souls?  

Mud rushed in
a roaring sludge
of sorrows, lashes
rebukes, scorn
bitterness, betrayal
heaping up
burying the light.  

The back seat was silent.  

In the sanctuary they stood mute
in the crowd of flourished palms
hosannas fluttering like petals
watching their kids in the happy throng
pass by with pain in their eyes.  

Across town the detective
poured herself another cup of coffee
scanned reports from last night
homicide, hit and run
three break-ins, some domestics.  

Robert rolled over,
knees up to his chin, gripping the covers.
He hurt so bad. He couldn’t get those feelings
for Andy to go away, nor the horror
in the cafeteria when they snickered and laughed.  

Lester sat at his kitchen table, thumbing through his Bible.
He got the diagnosis the day before.  
The words didn’t make sense.
He looked around.
Everything seemed tilted sideways.
Does cancer cause this? he wondered.  

Alice in a back pew waved her palm like a white flag.
During the week she goes into a house full of roaches
and mice to treat the baby of a twelve year old girl.
People so desperate, so much pain. Plse pray,
she texts her friend and waves harder,
counting on this Jesus to make a difference.  

Nations thrash and groan. Politicians rage.
The bomb ticks in the parked car.
Seas haul homes and lives
out to watery oblivion.  

Some peasant playing a fool on a donkey
rides into town saying he is the King.
He is going to turn things around,
unseat the emperors,
release the grasp of greed,
cure the lust for money,
and heal the virus.
Sure enough the fool gets himself killed.  

Everyone is looking for a goat to carry off
that mudslide of shame, regret, and responsibility.

For a while we can pimp up the peasant,
wave some foliage, call him king
as the bullies and the haters
the fear mongers and the betrayers 
the self- righteous and the proud hitch
a ride on his back like fleas.
Then we can go home, relax
watch the ball game and root for our team.  

But the peasant with pain in his eyes
on the donkey has his own agenda.  

I am not your Palm Sunday ornament,
a wonder super hero
your ticket to respectability
a card to play in your political games.  

Look again. I am you.
I am you riding high into town.
I am you awash in disgrace and humiliation.
I am you having done the unthinkable
and there is no way you can repair the damage you caused.  

I am you, holiness, hawking yourselves day and night
in the holy places you have turned into markets.
I am you, holiness, stuck
right down in the middle of a profane life in a profane world.
I am you, holiness, betrayed by a sneer, or the grab for influence.
I am you, holiness, trampled on and defiled.  

Will you duck out now
skip those other services
and only show up year after year
in your new clothes
to see the lilies and hear the music?  

Or will you come back
to listen to my commandment 
to let me wash your feet
and drink to a new covenant?  
Will you stay awake with me
and with yourself one hour in our suffering?
Will you say, not my will, but thine?  

Will you face your betrayer, see what you need to see 
become truth in the face of authority?
Will you strip off all your disguises, costumes
facelifts, masks, and self-deceit?
Will you hand over your assets for others to toss the dice?  

Will you watch at our dying?
Will you thirst?
Will you feel your own pain?
Will you cry out why has God forsaken us?  

Will you rest in the tomb
that silent womb of mystery
dead with me?  

Will you come early on the third day?


Lily

Lily (Photo credit: amitkotwal)

______________________________

Note to readers:  This blog is part of a series of Lenten “short takes” on the themes of lent, which follow more or less the lectionary Scripture lessons for this season. Like a note you find tucked under the bark of a tree, a lozenge to let melt in your mouth, an amulet to wear around your neck, I hope these little reflections may hold a small dose of truth or comfort  or challenge for your life on the way to Easter.

In the abundance of words which inundate us daily, it is easy for the message of redemption to be buried under the latest disaster, outrage or scandal. Likewise the familiar stories and passages of lent may grow dull and trite to ears and hearts already stuffed with words. 

I have noticed in my work as spiritual director that it is hard for many of us to take in the goodness and grace, as well as the challenge of the story of Jesus and God’s redeeming love. Perhaps we need to titrate the gospel. Sometimes a well- timed, tiny dose, carefully administered, may be what the Physician orders for our healing. And so slowly we build up our tolerance for love and more and more joy finds the faith in us through which to invade our being.

Dose titration:  adjustment of the dose until the medication
has achieved the desired effect

 Related Articles

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Love – in Small Doses for the Sin Sick Soul #6

Posted on March 15, 2013 | 2 comments


And we are put on earth a little space, 
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
– William Blake

Thin-Ice


Thin Ice

The interviewer probes,

so do you think the economy will get better?

Fear leaps up from the gut

climbs to her throat

voice shakes, melts into tears.


Fifty two,

back in her bedroom

at mom and dad’s

turning over at night

she sees the puzzles, rock collection,

Girl Scout Handbook

stacked on the shelf beneath the window,

teeters between now and then

on the brink

of circumstances beyond her  control.

Better to practice walking on thin ice 

before we find ourselves there.

How does one learn to trust

your life will bear your weight?

The grey sheet shrinks from the shore.

Dark water laps milkweed stubble,

slopping over hoof-pocked mud.

Could she step over the translucent border

to opaque surface a few feet further out?

Oh to put her future in a box,

tie it with a pretty bow

and place it next to high school

yearbooks on the shelf.

The fortune tellers circle,

bracelets jangling, bright skirts swinging,

leaning over their tea leaves crying out:

Alzheimer’s, incontinence, poverty, ruin!

After millions heard her cry on public radio,

after her immersion into choking humiliation

possibility awoke.

She saw what they had seen

and loved it now.

Come, she said,  as she took her nakedness

into her arms like a lost child,

a beautiful melody.

I will teach you how to walk on thin ice.

Let us go to the spring woods

and learn to pull uncertainty and loss 

to our chins like a blanket of oak leaves,

sweet pine needles, mushrooms,

and the milky blooms of May apples.

All the best and most beautiful things

are willing to go under at any moment

and take us with them into the dark

to be carried back again,

laughing sheaves of light.

Child of my heart, listen.

Don’t turn away from my face.

Nothing perishes

when born by the arms of grace.

May apple flower

Don’t ponder ancient history
Look! I am doing a new thing. Isaiah 43: 14-21

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves. Psalm 126: 4-6 NRSV

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Note to readers:  This blog is part of a series of Lenten “short takes” on the themes of lent, which follow more or less the lectionary Scripture lessons for this season. Like a note you find tucked under the bark of a tree, a lozenge to let melt in your mouth, an amulet to wear around your neck, I hope these little reflections may hold a small dose of truth or comfort  or challenge for your life on the way to Easter.

In the abundance of words which inundate us daily, it is easy for the message of redemption to be buried under the latest disaster, outrage or scandal. Likewise the familiar stories and passages of lent may grow dull and trite to ears and hearts already stuffed with words. 

I have noticed in my work as spiritual director that it is hard for many of us to take in the goodness and grace, as well as the challenge of the story of Jesus and God’s redeeming love. Perhaps we need to titrate the gospel. Sometimes a well- timed, tiny dose, carefully administered, may be what the Physician orders for our healing. And so slowly we build up our tolerance for love and more and more joy finds the faith in us through which to invade our being.

Dose titration:  adjustment of the dose until the medication
has achieved the desired effect

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