Day Three of the Later Lenten Attempt

It's kind of a lazy Saturday.  I'm not preaching tomorrow, so I am feeling footloose on that front.  We are going to church tomorrow in a little town about twenty miles down the road and then looking at a townhouse there.  If this all sounds like it might be part of yet another transition, yes, it could.  There are changes afoot in our lives and they do involve movement of all kinds....including the pack up your stuff and take it to a new place variety.  R and I were talking about this morning, and I mentioned that this time next month we would be giving our notice here, and that any time now we could start packing.  "Didn't we just do this?" I asked.  Well it's been almost a year, but in the larger scheme of things, it does seem like it came around again rather quickly.  Considering that I was in my last place seven years and the one before that almost twenty-five, this annual pack and go thing is a little disconcerting.  I was not always so stable of house, though.  In my earlier days I once had a period of time in which I moved thirteen times in eleven months! As I recall, I could make the entire move in a couple of large cars back then, which made it much easier.

One of my clients was talking about falling shoes the other day. That took me back. I had a few, hopefully useful, things to say to her about that. Like, try to stay in the moment, let your friends support you, and do whatever you can, whenever you can to take the focus off those stupid shoes! Trust, I said, that when they do fall, if they fall, you will have what you need to get through it in that moment.  Until then, really, there is nothing you can do about them.  And trying to provoke them into falling sooner....not a good plan, no matter how seductive it may seem in the moment.  It's a very Lenten thing though, being with those shoes, having them hanging, or suspended, however and where ever they are.  You know that at some point, they will be upon you and you will  need to deal.  It calls to mind the slow journey to the crucifixion that we remember during Lent. We know it's coming, has to come. I'm never really sure just how much Jesus knew exactly, but I'm guessing he was fairly sure he was coming to no good end.  And yet, he managed to keep moving through his life, his ministry, intensely present, real, and focused.  Did that come from that moment of when he knew himself claimed, loved by God?  Or did it evolve...through the desert and beyond, through all those days of healing and teaching, feeding and praying, a sense of coming to know not just how it was coming to be with him, the handwriting on the wall, but also the sure and certain knowledge that the suffering, whatever it might be would be for something, something bigger than anything had ever been? Just thinking, just wondering.....