Friday of the Second Week of Lent
Leave me alone with God
as much as may be.
As the tide draws the water close in upon the shore.
Make me an island, set apart,
alone with you, God, holy to you.
Then with the turning of the tide
prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world
beyond,
the world that rushes in on me
till the waters come again and fold me back to you.
St Aidan of Lindisfarne
Out at the lake. Such a frozen openness. The geese songs weaving through the frosted landscape, loudest of all. What light there over the lapping water's song beneath the skin of ice; a dreamy, milky light to live into. The sparkling spread out like a path inviting and treacherous as the way of Christ. Sail boats on trailers and covered with snow: their masts’ glinting metal spiring through the tangling trees, waiting on the docks of quietude beneath the pines.
I wanted to sail into all that luffing light, into prayer and solitude and the presence of the Lord but was called into a meeting, a tediousness of operations. There is so much time drawn away from my Lord and at my own choosing. Lack of prayer has left me in the world and of it. There is nowhere I would rather be than in His presence fully. My soul like the geese trying to form an arrow through the darkening air. The waning, gibbous moon a dust of light against the chalk-blue sky, signaling this brief span between lingering dusk and darkness, late winter and spring, breathing and the absence of breathing, the possibilities and the finalities. To be poured out as a libation in the meanwhile. This is the way.
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