One of our favorite phrases since moving to this part of the country is “Are we having fun yet?”

Here we are in the middle of Lent and I have to ask: Are we having fun yet?

Lent is not meant to be some joyless grind where we just have to withstand it to make it to the end at Easter.  This season is supposed to be a joyful season of re-examining, re-conditioning, and re-learning how to be more and more like Christ.  It is meant to be a season of re-birth and new life to be celebrated with culminating joy at Easter.

How are we doing?  While our Lenten practices may not make us ecstatic, we should at least be filled with joy while doing them.  The re-shaping, re-learning, and re-conditioning of our lives through our Lenten practices help us to be able to be made new into a more perfect follower of Christ, a more perfect image of Christ in our world.

Are we having fun yet?  Our faith and our practice, our Lent and our re-shaping should be a joy.  And every moment graced.

NBC has added a new show to its mid season lineup. The title? “Awake!”  It caught my attention and I find it quite intriguing.  The plot line has a protagonist living through two realities – one where he is dreaming and one where he is awake.  Only, neither we, as the viewer, nor he as the main character, know which is the reality and which is the dream.

It got me thinking about how we are going through our reality.  Are we awake?  Or, are we merely sleep-walking through our days so we can get past this present time to another day and leave behind the stress and unpleasantness of this time and this place?  I believe it is an important spiritual question.  How much of our day do we notice and savor and reflect on?  And, how much of our day do we just rush past, as if asleep, to get to the next thing?

Let’s make this day a day of total wakefulness.  Let’s listen to what is being said.  Acknowledge the impact people have on us.  Reach out when the opportunity arises.  Savor the blue of the sky or the emerging flowers of spring.  Smell the flavors of life all around us.  Feel the dampness and the rain on our face and wake up to the wonder of each day.  God communicates with us through the ordinary events of our days, but we have to be awake in order to realize that.  This is not a dream.  It is the universe unfolding in our midst.

It would be a shame and a waste of Lent to sleep-walk through these days.  Each moment is graced.

I was awakened this beautiful spring morning with the sound of various bird song.  Being on the East coast has revealed there are many different types of birds and bird song than we are used to on the West coast.  I marvel at how many different sounds and melodies are present when I stand in silence near the trees.  What beautiful music!

It made me think about what kind of music we are offering the world.  What do people hear when they stand in silence next to us?  Is it a beautiful sound of melodious harmony or is it complaining and grousing about something we find disagreeable?  How often do we let the music in our souls interact with the music of the universe so that a symphony of pleasant sound can be experienced by others?

If your experience is anything like mine, that’s not too often!  It’s oh so much easier to complain about something than it is to praise or glory over something.  I have heard that studies have shown that we will talk with a complete stranger to complain about something, but rarely speak to a stranger if we have something nice to say.  Perhaps we might take today to practice singing a beautiful tune so others might hear something pleasant.  It could take some effort, but I think the effort will be worth it.  Perhaps our tune might awaken in others the beauty that is all around us but that we so often fail to see.  It could be a graced moment – for others and for us.

Much has been written about forgiveness and still its meaning sometimes evades us.  We often think that forgiveness requires that the offending party ask for our forgiveness so that we can then magnanimously forgive them.  But what if the offending party has no clue they have offended us – or what if the offending party is no longer living?  How then can we forgive them?

When Jesus said we must forgive “seventy times seven” times, he left no instructions on how we are to do that.  And, I’m beginning to think that forgiveness is an inside job.  In other words, the forgiveness we need to offer others is something that must come first from inside of us, regardless of what others have done or said to us.  Our forgiveness has to begin with us because when we refuse to forgive, harboring the negative emotions can be like a cancer that eats away at us.  We are the ones damaged by refusing to forgive.

This Lent, let’s work on forgiveness.  Is there a person or persons we need to forgive?  What are we waiting for?  Forgiveness begins when we decide to make the first step.  It begins inside of us and may not even require that we confront the person who we feel has offended us.  Let’s practice taking leave of our grudges or hateful thoughts and think instead about forgiveness.  It is a form of loving that Jesus taught us and it may provide many graced moments.

One of the lesser known monuments in this city is a beautiful small garden off of Massachusetts Avenue dedicated to the Lebanese-American author and poet, Khail Gibran.  I visited it today and was moved once again by Gibran’s reflections and incredible wisdom.  One particular quote was carved in the stone of a bench and I was surprised to learn it belonged to him.  For many years I have understood it as folk wisdom, and it is something that I have tried to remember and apply to my life.  He said, “Work is love made visible.”  That is an amazing thought.  What we do with our lives is how we make our love visible to the world.  What work we choose, what work we do, and how we do it is how our love is made visible to others, and to the world.

So, how do we do our work?  Do we do it with the love that shows others how full our hearts are?  Or, do we do it just to be done with it and get on to something else more entertaining?  “Work is love made visible.”  That’s any work we do – our chosen profession – and the mundane tasks of everyday life.  And, if our work is truly how our love is made visible, perhaps we would do well to think about that as we go about our work.  It could be a graced moment.

I learned a very interesting little bit of information the other day while catching a tidbit of a cooking show.  I never knew that when you leave bread out in the air to dry so that it will soak up more liquid all that happens is that the bread becomes stale.  If you really want to dry the bread so that it will soak up more liquid, say for French toast, bread pudding, or turkey dressing, you need to put it in the oven for a bit to actually dry it out.  The oven temperature evaporates the liquid content in the bread leaving it ready to receive the liquids you want it to contain for your recipe.

This just amazed me!  And I couldn’t help but think that perhaps we are much like that bread.  If we meet periods of dryness in our lives, without really withstanding any heat, all that happens is we become stale.  But, if we allow ourselves and our spirits to embrace the dryness and endure the heat of arid times in our spiritual lives, then we will be ready – more ready – to receive the wonderful refreshment God has in mind for us and we can be transformed into something new.

Such periods of spiritual dryness may be necessary for us to fully receive the life of the Spirit we are offered.  It may be necessary for us to dry out all that is not of God in our lives so that we can be hydrated again with all that is God, offering the wonderful recipe of God’s love, compassion, and acceptance to the world.

Spiritual dryness and excessive heat in our lives may be graced moments.  Embrace them.

Stories are really containers.  Our stories are the boxes and packaging, tape and string that hold the graced moments of our lives.  Stories allow us to re-live and re-tell the joys and sorrows of our days; to remember and share what it was we were doing, seeing, thinking, feeling, or experiencing.  Without stories, our days and the experiences of grace we encounter would be lost.  So, our stories become sacred containers!

Yesterday I walked down to the Mall amid the sun and budding spring trees.  I saw “Beau,” the First dog, walking out on his lawn behind the White House.  I marveled once again at the monument to the great courage of those who fought in WWII, both over seas and on the home front.  I wondered about my future and the future of this country, and I inspected the cherry blossoms on the tidal basin to see when they might be ready for picture perfect photographing.

It was a beautiful day!  I felt free and unhurried and I stopped to take all the pictures I wanted.  While some of the trees are beginning to bud, the cherry blossoms are still tightly closed protecting themselves from the fickle weather.  All the cherry trees, that is, but one – a single tree with southern exposure – was just beginning to expose the tiny cracks in its buds that allowed a bit of pink petal to show through.

It made me think of our lives and how sometimes we hold our stories so tightly that no one or no things can penetrate our hard exteriors.  It’s Lent and Spring is approaching.  It’s time to open up and share with others what has been growing inside of us through the darkness of winter.  Let’s use these days to remember our stories, the graced moments, and to relish how God is present and working in our lives.

I couldn’t help but be moved by today’s scripture readings.  Both Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Psalm 1 make reference to the person who trusts in the Lord.  Such a person is like a tree planted beside waters where they can stretch out their roots to the stream and never fear the drought when it comes.

Would that we all could let our roots go deep to the still waters of life in the Spirit.  I think that may be another grace Lent offers us.  This season gives us an opportunity to plant ourselves beside the waters so we can grow and stretch our roots out again and again, closer and closer toward the source of life we thirst for.  And, at the end of this Lenten season, we do not go back to the way were before – as if this were just a practice time to see if we could achieve something.  No, Lent is a time to extend ourselves beyond what we are now, to practice new ways of being and living, so that once Lent is over, we will have incorporated new habits and become a new person, more closely conformed to Christ our Lord.

So, we must practice the traits this season that we want to reflect to the world for the rest of our lives.  Like a tree planted near running water, with roots stretching deep to the source of all life, we can find strength and fruitfulness even in times of drought.  Graced moments can sustain us like the freshness of cool water.

Amazing to think about.  Even more amazing to live.

As Lent progresses, it would profit us to remember the words and thoughts of the great theologian, Rahner.  He reminds us that if God is going to speak to us, that communication will come to us in the ordinary events of our days and our experiences . . . . the very ordinary events of our days and our experiences.

What is God speaking to you today?

Nature is confused again.  The trees are beginning to bud, the daffodils are out, the children’s toys are in the community sand box and today it’s trying to snow.   When nature experiences such moments of confusion, why are we so hard on ourselves when we do?

I often find myself wanting to go back, to revisit something I’ve done before, return to an old place that I found so familiar and comforting, or replay the great successes in my life.  It’s a longing to go back to a more uncomplicated time, a time when we thought we had all things in order and there was no confusion.

But, we cannot go back, no matter how hard we try.  We can hold all those moments in memory and cherish them, but we cannot go back and relive them.  They are gone forever.

Any journey – especially the spiritual journey – is one that only goes forward.  In following Christ we must be willing to face the unknowns, the unfamiliar, the new thing we have never done before.  There is no going back.  We can only go forward.  And every movement forward – in our lives, in our relationships, in our families, in our jobs, in our leisure pursuits, in our life of faith – is a graced moment, with our companion, Christ, traveling with us.  Cherish and remember it.  Because soon this moment, too, will be a memory and we will be moving forward.

The weather forecast for mid week is 70 degrees.