Lent Week Six Meditation: Where

{Links are always at the end of your reading.}

For the remaining three weeks of our Lent study and documentation, I will only broadcast blog posts to complete the series. They will not be accompanied by a podcast episode.

Although it's no longer Lent season, my delight and desire is to conclude the series before I take you on my summer's contemplative writing pilgrimage/project.

This decision is what I perceive to be kindness for my mental health and my soul's well-being, in light of all of the changes and challenges my family and I encountered throughout the entirety of April.

Lend yourself to lean into week's six Lent theme: where.

"The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness there He met the wild beast. Angels ministered to Him." - Mark 1:12 For me, this verse portrays the paradox of the wilderness as a spiritual practice.

Wilderness—presence and absence, fear and angels, beasts and Spirit. And where exactly do they live? They live together in the wilderness—they live together in you and in me.

Wherever we experience communion in life, is where we will emerge out of the grace we have been given, the grace that carries us to and through wilderness.

This wilderness season has been helping me reframe how I perceive home. Our family was all packed up throughout the month of March waiting to move into a new home in April after our lease expired. But the wilderness had a lesson about what being homefull was all about. “I’m not homeless, I’m Homefull”. This became my wilderness affirmation. A feeling of homefullness was birthed in the wilderness, which helped me to lean into the heartache and the open-heartedness.

Finding places to belong wherever I go, is my sense of belonging—nowhere, yet everywhere. The wilderness is full of one paradox after another. Isn't that exactly how we experience relationships?

I write in my book, Healing & Held: A Book of Blessings and Lament Rooted in Numbers and Habakkuk:

"Because wilderness is about relationship, it was and still is the most appropriate place to burrow in the abundance of the Beloved's blessings of irrevocable healing, security, and prosperity."

The wilderness is not our detour place; it is the wide open space that is designed to guide us to choose the gift of Abba's holy embodiment for us.

During Lent season and beyond it, we are reminded where light shines. “Light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it” (John 1).

The reason the darkness cannot 'take possession of' or 'overtake' light is because since the beginning—revisit Genesis chapter one verses one and two—darkness cannot not prevent the generative access to life. And even better, it's even used to access that life.

BLESS - Where

Wilderness is where we learn to hold truly follow they way Jesus teaches us to embrace and hold each other and move towards each other. It is only in wilderness that we learn to allow Love to do deep work and to saturate the most isolated place of our humanity.

BREATHE - Inhale Presence, Exhale Absence

Notice your breathe. Magnify God's presence and let go of the attention you give to what's absent. Repeat as necessary.

RELAX - In Following Jesus in the darkness and in the light

Jesus is not allergic to our dark places (period!).

Go Slow & Savor Our Meditation Focus - Where

Deuteronomy 8:3 & Luke 4:4: "Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD."

Mohawkmomma Soul Podcast Episode:

— Did you tune into the previous Lent episodes, yet?