Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Ash Wednesday

12:15, Café @ RMIT. I went to Mass at 7:15, had a breakfast meeting with another chaplain at 8:30: then a meeting with International Student Support people at 10 and two quick meetings to touch base following that. It’s good to sit down, grab a sandwich and breathe.

So Jesus goes to the desert and we follow. And I remember visiting a friend in the Nevada desert some years ago who told me that there was a different beauty there, “There are flowers here, lovely ones, but you have to look!” And when I got over the expectation of green trees and flowers, ideals and images from the gardens I knew, I found she was right. There was another style of grace, new blossoms in the shade of rocks, hidden green leaves, soft growth, bright surprises that I hadn’t seen at first, because I was looking for something bigger, more easily categorized, closer to what I had known before. That’s the wrong focus for the desert, you have to see more than you look for, you have to prepare to be surprised by the small bright spots, the ones that aren’t domesticated yet. It’s time to learn from the wild animals and the foreign foliage in an unknown wider landscape, That is one of the ways to meet the desert.

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