40acts 2014. Beginning Again.

A generous Lent has begun.  It’s been a year.   Maybe it is time to dust off my blog and integrate a discipline of writing and sharing into my Lenten practice.

Now I just have to remember how to get onto my blog site…(yes, it has been that long.)

Anyway, here it is, reflections on 40acts 2014.

“Each journal has a story even if it does not yet contain one.”

Day 1:  A Journal

I have bazillion journals on my book shelf.  One entire shelf  is dedicated just to journals.  Most of them I have written in, however some have never come close to a writing utensil. Used or not,  I can tell you where each journal came from:  the multi-coloured paperback from a discount section of Chapters (I purchased  it with the purpose of filling it with poetry—its pages are still empty);  the two-toned fake leather journals  I bought because they looked like a photo album I had received from the mother of a beloved friend who had died the same year I was married; the journal I picked up in Thailand to chronicle the adventure of riding elephants and floating down the river in a boat that had a car engine fastened to the back of it;  the journal with the red sparkly cover that a first grader gave me when I was a student teacher–
Me:  “Wow.  That’s a beautiful notebook!  Thank you!”
First grader:  “Yeah.  It works, too.  I tried it.”

Each journal has a story even if it does not yet contain one.

Start a journal.

I went to my bookshelf my eyes running over the collection, remembering.  Picking them up one by one I looked at their covers, felt the weight of them in my hands and flipped through the pages to see what they contained:  poems, rants, questions, experiences, sermon ideas, shopping lists.   Through this process I rediscovered a unique book with a moss green velvet cover and yellow unlined pages rimmed with gold.  The pages remind me of a bible, or of a gift edition of Shakespeare Sonnets.   I had only written in the first twenty or so pages of the journal so most of it is blank.  It was a gift from my mother-in- law the fall I began my last year of studies for my M.Div.   Inside the cover on the first page she had fastened two pins:  one was a cross with a circle of people holding hands, the other, footprints.   She had written a note to me on the first page  “As you travel…you will always have us around to support you and cheer you on!”

Flipping through the pages I also discovered a quote by a woman from the first church I served and which I wrote down.   It was about why she read the bible. “It was gift from someone.  It didn’t seem right to let it sit on the shelf unused.”

Somehow, this journal just seems…perfect.

“Create a journal and begin Lent with a gratitude list.”

I sit down, so many memories filling my heart.  The pen flows easily.

My Gratitude List

1. Family
2. Friends
3. Faith
4. Elephants
5. First graders
6. Bibles
7. Gold paged journals  …