It’s an odd feeling, having ashes1 scraped across one’s forehead. I can’t say exactly why, but there’s something refreshing about being anointed with a symbol of my inevitable demise. Perhaps it’s because I live in a culture that is alternately terrified of death and pretends death doesn’t exist. Yet once each year, I can walk into a church and be smeared with soot and told that I am going to die: ‘Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return’

“Wow – it’s so peaceful here. I just feel the stillness as soon as I arrive. It must be amazing to live here all the time – no cares, no worries, just rest and prayer and peace.” The middle-aged man sitting next to me at table concluded his thoughts, “Honestly, I’m a bit jealous that you get to live like this for so long.”

Every morning, we start our day as a community with Lauds (morning prayer). Towards the end of Lauds, we have a time of spontaneous prayer called ‘praise and intention.’ Though we don’t have a script for the prayer, almost every day I end up praying to stay aware of God’s love, or to see God in others. It’s a simple prayer, and an intention I need to re-set every day. Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of a broken record, especially when I couple my morning prayer of intention with my daily prayer of confession at Vespers, which is often something like ‘Lord, I confess forgetting your love this day, and failing to see you in others…’ Then the next morning at Lauds I pray again to remember. Day in, day out, our life is a task of return and remembering, coupled with forgetting, and then returning and remembering again.

Greetings, friends. This is Robin Junker Boyce here again with Mark Kutolowski of Metanoia of Vermont eager to engage in a conversation with Mark around the topic of loving your enemies..

In Doorways to the Sacred, I explored the transformative spiritual potential of three major life events – major loss, giving birth (for women), and traditional male rites of passage (for men). Each of these major events features a significant dislocation of the ordinary psyche, and opens the doorway for unknowing, surrender, and deeper encounter with the presence of God. These powerful events can serve to re-orient our lives and forever change our sense of reality. After experiencing a ‘great surrender’, we can never believe our own agenda quite as rigidly as we had before, even if our ordinary, egoic consciousness re-asserts itself as the director of our lives.

“I don’t think I’m ready for this.” Lisa’s voice was calm and matter of fact. The sky outside our small yurt was growing lighter in anticipation of dawn and Lisa had been in intense labor for a little over an hour. Her words came in the few short minutes between contractions.

“Good,” I thought to myself. “The baby’s coming soon!”

The dawn chorus begins before I open my eyes. There are enough songs outside that it’s difficult, with my limited knowledge of bird calls, to distinguish one tune from another. Instead, it’s one layer of melody upon another, seemingly uncoordinated yet somehow harmonious and beautiful to hear.

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”

- Mark 12:41-44

“God forbid that there be war. Please Lord, let there be peace!” Father John cried out his lament from the altar during the Prayers of the Faithful at Sunday Mass in our little country church in Norwich, Vermont. A few days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

Fasting – it’s perhaps the single discipline most associated with Lent. We are reminded of the practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving every year at the beginning of Lent as we commemorate Jesus Christ’s 40-day fast in the wilderness. While I grew up hearing about the spiritual value of fasting every year, practically this was translated into the practice of ‘giving up’ something for Lent. It could be a favored food, like chocolate or soda, or it could be giving up reading news media or watching TV. My dad always gave up eating between meals.