I’ve tried to establish some new patterns of physical health that have always been difficult for me to maintain when I was out of the house early and back just before dinner but I have more space now. My son Gabriel has me on an exercise regimen that is starting to feel less painful each day and I try to walk several kilometers each day, often down Telegraph Trail. As we enter Lent, beginning today with Ash Wednesday, I want to commit myself to Tevye-like conversations each day. I want to keep Frederick Buechner’s Godric in my mind as I do that.
“What’s prayer? It’s shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish in the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else waves would dash him on the rocks, or he would drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard.”
I would like prayer to be the wind that fills my sail. It isn’t by any stretch. I want this Lent to be a commitment to letting the winds blow more strongly into the tattered cloth of my soul.