The lights are dimmer. Dry sticks wait where flowers more often bloom. Deep purple replaces vibrant green or bright white. The font is covered, and we wait for the waters of Baptism to appear in our midst again. We gather to pray and share simple meals together. And we wait for a light that is still distant and faint.

This is a time of repentance and return...of reorientation to the central things. But, how do we keep a holy Lent? The world does not slow down for us, though many restaurants offer us fish specials on Friday. The daylight is starting to grow longer, though we might hardly notice with light switches and glowing screens within arms' reach at all times. Our lives go on, even as we try to be still.

It has been a blessing to me to begin a new chapter of ministry during this season of the church year. Often ordinations and installations might wait until more festive seasons...but our life together brought these celebrations and this contemplative season into the same place and time. On two quiet Saturdays, with the church's most special celebratory world still buried under ground, we prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide me...and to guide us...in our journey. Stillness and celebration all at once.

What has brought you to stillness in these Lenten days? What has brought you to joy? Or are you still waiting for one of the two to come back to your life again?

That is the beauty of the church's time. Every year we journey through a cycle - expectation and birth at Advent and Christmas; revelation at Epiphany; glory and light at Transfiguration; darkness, hunger and death at Ash Wednesday, Lent and Good Friday; resurrected life at Easter; the Spirit's enlivening breath at Pentecost...and on and on.

Sometimes the seasons of our lives and the seasons of the church are in harmony, and sometimes they feel at odds. But in both cases, we are carried through all the seasons of life - rehearsing the entirety of time within the circle of one year, so that we have learned how to journey and how to support one another in our journey at every moment of life. We learn how God journeys with us.

So whether this Lent is all stillness, or all celebration...or some of both..for you. Know that God goes with you...and so does your family in faith. And we are blessed to be on this journey together.