The passages today speak to me about foundations. More critically, what is it that gives us the basis for who we are and what we have to offer the world?
A spiritual director on a retreat I went on many years ago suggested a different way for me to walk the labyrinth on the grounds of the retreat house. I would enter at today and at every corner or turn I would go back in time and think about a moment of my life, blessed, troubled, joyful. Eventually I would regress to the time I was a child, The center of the labyrinth was to be that moment in time in God's existence, in God's presence, before my earthly birth or even conception that God decided that what the world needed was me. God would grace the world with me. Izzy and Bob would have a new child who would be just what God decided the world needed. Needless to say when I was at the center of the labyrinth in that moment, I was shaking, overcome with the sanctity of the moment, afraid of and in the presence of God at an intensely graced moment for me. So when I read ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you (Jeremiah 1:5) I can only think of that moment in the Labyrinth. I cannot help but know that each and every one of us is intentionally created by God, special and unique. As they say "God don't make junk".
When I say that God created me, it encompasses so much we might simply gloss over. What are the many facets of who we are? What are our gifts, our penchants, our talents? We are all fascinating beings. If part of our Lenten journey is to discover and embrace our humanity, it is to discover as much as we can about ourselves, who we are and who we were created to be by a living and loving God. Accepting all the 'stuff' of who we are is the foundation God set down. We will never be whole or happy until we acknowledge who we are and embrace it, God's gift to us and God's gift to the world.
Mark 3:31-4:9
Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’
Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’
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