Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Lent: Who are you?

Thursday 10 March 2011

I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray. The Layers, Stanley Kunitz

Lent Introduction Read John 1:19-28 and return

Still yourself

Sit and take in your environment. Be present to it - the flaking paint on the wall, the folds in the curtain, the shiny buttons on your monitor. Allow your breathing to slow you down by noticing its gentle rhythms. I am a voice from the wilderness: make the way straight.

Heeding the voice

Jesus says, empty yourself, be childlike, and be joined to me. So many of his injunctions or invitations attempt to make a straight and smooth way for our coming together. Yet we wander and stray even as we grow dimly aware that at our centre we are already united with Him, we are a union. This is our true abiding principle of being, says Kunitz. I wonder if our greatest struggle might be with one particular voice. The voice that whispers 'You will only be truly free and deeply you when you put up some barriers: withhold or hide some of yourself. Hold something back and retain some sense of separation.' John speaks his wild words to us today, 'make the way utterly straight'. Such a voice leads us toward who we really are. Andrew Hook