March already? It can't be!

I have been getting up a little early this week to put some attention to my days. I'm not sure exactly what that's about, except to say that the discipline of keeping Lent has been a part of my life-pattern of the past decade. 

I realized after I left seminary and began serving a humanist congregation that I needed to be intentional about my own spiritual practice (duh!). The pattern that I had developed over time was largely seasonal--a week at Ferry Beach in the summer, a week in Montreal in the winter (visiting cultural institutions, having time on  my own, and a lot  of sitting in big fancy churches where I was invisible), some time in retreat with the Cowley boys, or with UUMA collegaues, or the UCC pastor's study retreat in Springfield, or even the Advent study with Bishop Stendahl. I didn't have a pattern of devotion in my church, and needed to create one for myself.

My therapist Dr. O'Donnell had encouraged a Lenten practice to get me out of winter hibernation (that sounds like a redundancy), and so I began a pattern of study and prayer, including a little more morning time. (That's even the reason I started this blog a couple of years ago--more intentional morning time to "tame" my monkey-mind.)

But this Lenten practice is not about taming anything, rather, I hope to establish a "pattern" of my own in a life that so often is caught in other people's lives' patterns. And then there is this blog, a pattern of patter(?).

My sister Carol encouraged me to spend the time to write. And so I have . . . although it seems it is about "nothing." 

And yet, as I sit here, O know where my mind is going: to a Sunday service in a few hours, where Melanie Morrison will preach, and where I will be moved; to a relationship building campaign training that I hope will be productive and reflective; to the Hellobores which are in the back yard and which I hope will produce this spring their first flowers since transplantation; and to my aching back which so wants me to take the morning off and go to the gym.

Which I can't, which I won't. But still, paying just a little attention to how I'm doing in my body gets me at least a little in touch with the world. And so I'll do a little stretching before hitting the showers . . .

The sun is a few minutes away, the air quite clear, the temperature a tiny bit brisk, and I'm thinking of family and friends and, of course, my congregation and my call.

Good morning.