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Discerning the Desert Flower

Whilst reading a book written by and for women coping with cancer, yesterday I came across a quote by Brother Roger of Taize who reputedly said:
"When desertions, doubts, discouragements and the silences of God seem to cover everything, will you discern the desert flower?"
That seemed to be a pretty good theme for Lent this year.
During Lent last year I took up a discipline of positivity, in contrast to my usual grouchiness - see yesterday's post for example... and I've decided to do the same this year, using yesterday's post as my psychological "pancake Tuesday" using up the negativity lying around in my larder. The idea is to once again have a Lent which isn't about giving things up, but offering uplifting thoughts... I'll even be using that as a criterion for any Saturday link-dumps... So if you are looking for cynicism, (self) righteous indignation and pure unadulterated anger, you may look elsewhere for a while at least...
We'll see if my hit rate goes down...
By the way, last year in my introduction to my Lent project, I mentioned the comment in an oriental script with the word S E X embedded in it which had been appended to a strangely popular post... well, I was right, when I removed the dubious comment I stopped getting as many hits... There's a sermon in there somewhere...
Another discipline I intend following, prompted by my good lady wife, is to go back and use the material prepared by the Centre for Contemporary Christianity under the title of "Out of the Ordinary." I actually did a short internship with CCCI during my last sabbatical and was part of the team who prepared it for Lent that year... so I thought it might be interesting to revisit it during this Lent and the Sabbatical that begins this time next week...
If you haven't yet thought of a Lent discipline for yourself, you could try Rachel Held Evans' back catalogue of ideas.

Shalom

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