A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent

Woman with a cross of ashes on her forehead

Dear Daughter,

On Ash Wednesday, if you were in church, the minister would invite you to the observance of a “holy Lent” and mark your forehead with the ashes of repentance.

Let me be very clear about this: I love you so much. I delight in you. I cherish you. For ever.

Here are a few more things I want you to comprehend. Despite what you’ve been taught, “holy” does not mean pure and unearthly. “Sin” does not mean breaking my rules and making me mad. “Penitence” does not mean listing and wallowing in all the ways you’re wrong and bad. “Repentance” does not mean promising to do better to stay out of trouble.

Please think about these words a new way, on Ash Wednesday and every other day going forward.

What if you only sin when you refuse healing and cling to brokenness? When you use those sharp broken edges to hurt yourself and others?

What if holiness is when you choose to be whole, even though you’re terrified? When you embrace and enfold those pieces of yourself you’ve lopped off to fit into others’ molds?

What if penitence is when you see yourself clearly, and know, speak, and live from your heart?

What if repentance is returning to your true self in all her messy glory?

What if, this Lent, instead of focusing on the ways you’re not good enough and the ways you fall short, you commit to your own healing?

I was there at the Big Bang, enlivening every particle, atom and molecule. You are made of me, and through me you are connected to everything and everyone. I am everywhere, my love. You live in me and I live in you.

This means, my dear, when you let yourself be healed, your healing heals the world. And when you cling to your brokenness, the world stays a little more broken than it needs to be. Your healing is important and necessary.

You think your healing is selfish. That’s incorrect. On the contrary, your healing is crucial. I’m using that word deliberately, sweetheart. Your healing is the crux – where you and I come together.

This Lent, the only fasts I want from you are these: Fast from distractions that allow you to stay wounded and broken. Fast from believing you’re not good enough. Fast from making yourself small, and nice, and silent. Fast from all judgment, especially of yourself.

This Lent, make space for me to flow into you and through you.

Befriend your fear, your anger, and your sadness. They are a deep source of nourishment and strength.

Let your love go free.

Let your joy be unconfined.

Sweetheart, healing isn’t complicated, and it’s always here for you. All you have to do is tap into it, like a springtime maple tree or an aquifer of living water. You know this. But it’s so easy to forget, isn’t it? All you have to do is let me clear out the dams and the trash, the resentments and identities and old, too-small skins that keep you stuck and stagnant. Open your heart armor just a little. Let go, child. Breathe and soften. That’s all you have to do. I’ll do the rest.

This Ash Wednesday, let those ashes symbolize our unending connection, a connection so easy to forget and so simple to strengthen. When the priest wipes those gritty ashes on your forehead and says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” celebrate your elemental oneness with this dear, dirty earth, and with me. I am in those ashes, in the dust, in the stars, and in you.

I need you, my daughter. You’re the only you I created. Please, let yourself be the creation I made you to be. You don’t need someone outside yourself telling you how to live. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Trust me. I’ve got you.

All my Love,

God

A Lenten gift for you: two printables of this post are downloadable here.

Photo: Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

“Are those HUMAN ashes?!”

Monkey asking "Are those human ashes?!"

“Are those human ashes?!”

Three twelve-year-old boys asked me that question when I was teaching at a Roman Catholic school some years ago. These boys, Protestant like me, were attending the compulsory Ash Wednesday mass for the first time, and were horrified at what they thought was going on.

I reassured my young students that no, those were not human ashes.

Today though, to you, I say “Yes! I hope so!” I hope the ashes of Ash Wednesday are your ashes. I hope during this holy season of Lent that you let what’s in the way of love burn up in Easter’s holy fire and wash away in the waters of new birth.

Lent is a time to get back to the true you. To return to and relearn the real sweetness of your heart, underneath the accumulations, armoring, and disguises of the years.

Soften. Gently notice obstacles to love and let them be removed. Be open and willing to be burned up. Trust your essential goodness. Listen deeply to your heart, which is the same thing as listening to God.

Your heart is also God’s heart. Your soul is that place within you where you and the Holy are most connected and interpenetrated.  

That’s the point of Lent. Disciplines are how we do this relearning, reconnecting, and listening, as incarnated souls living in precious bodies on this lovely planet in this singular moment. So choose your Lenten discipline carefully and make sure it does what you want it to do.

Perhaps you imagine Lent as spring cleaning. Or getting the garden ready for another growing season. Or razing that fancy McMansion and building a tiny sustainable house in its place. Or, as they do in northern New Mexico, cleaning the acequias so water flows freely to thirsty places. Or something else entirely.

The point, when the priest smears the gritty ashes on your forward and says “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” is not to dwell in your badness. The point is to reconnect with your goodness, your heart and soul, where you are at home in Holiness.

The hope of Lent is to give everything that is not true – every obstacle to loving yourself, others, and our world – to the flames of Lent.

Give everything that binds you to the flames, and rise in freedom with the sun of Easter.

Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash

A letter from God to her daughters who observe Lent, 2019

Ash Wednesday-ahna-ziegler-558904-unsplashDear Daughter,

On Ash Wednesday, if you’re in church, the minister will invite you to the observance of a “holy Lent” and mark your forehead with the ashes of repentance.

Let me be very clear about this at the outset: I love you so much. I delight in you. I cherish you. For ever.

Here are a few more things I want you to comprehend. Despite what you’ve been taught, “holy” does not mean pure and unearthly. “Sin” does not mean breaking my rules and making me mad. “Penitence” does not mean listing and wallowing in all the ways you’re wrong and bad. Repentance does not mean promising to do better to stay out of trouble.

Please think about these words a new way, on Ash Wednesday and every other day going forward.

What if you only sin when you refuse healing and cling to brokenness? When you use those sharp broken edges to hurt yourself and others?

What if holiness is when you choose to be whole, even though you’re terrified? When you embrace and enfold those pieces of yourself you’ve lopped off to fit into others’ molds?

What if penitence is when you see yourself clearly, and know, speak, and live from your heart?

What if “repentance” is re-membering your true self in all her messy glory?

What if, this Lent, instead of focusing on the ways you’re not good enough and the ways you fall short, you commit to your own healing?

I was there at the Big Bang, enlivening every particle, atom and molecule. You are made of me, and through me you are connected to everything and everyone. I am everywhere. You swim in me and I in you.

This means, my dear, when you let yourself be healed, your healing heals the world. And when you cling to your brokenness, the world stays a little more broken than it needs to be. Your healing is important and necessary. You think your healing is selfish. That’s incorrect. Your healing is crucial. I’m using that word deliberately, sweetheart. Your healing IS the crux – where you and I come together.

This Lent, the only fasts I want from you are these: Fast from distractions that allow you to stay wounded and broken. Fast from believing you’re not good enough. Fast from making yourself small, and nice, and silent. Fast from all judgment, especially of yourself.

This Lent, make space for me to flow into you and through you.

Befriend your fear, your anger, and your sadness. They are a deep source of nourishment and strength.

Let your love go free.

Let your joy be unconfined.

Sweetheart, healing isn’t complicated, and it’s always available. All you have to do is tap into it, like a maple tree in springtime or an aquifer of living water. You know this. But it’s so easy to forget, isn’t it? All you have to do is let me clear out the dams and the trash, the resentments and identities and old, too-small skins, that keep you stuck and stagnant. Relax your heart armor just a little. And then allow yourself to flow, child. That’s all you have to do. I’ll do the rest.

This Ash Wednesday, let those ashes symbolize our unending connection, a connection so easy to forget and so simple to strengthen. When the priest wipes those gritty ashes on your forehead and says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” celebrate your elemental oneness with this dear, dirty earth and with me. I am in those ashes, in the dust, in the stars, and in you.

Girl, I need you! You’re the only you I created. So, please, let yourself be the creation I made you to be. You don’t need someone outside yourself telling you how to live. Trust yourself. Trust your heart. Trust me. I’ve got you.

All my Love,

God

Ash Wednesday, 2020 update: This post was first published on Ash Wednesday of 2019, and it’s received over 60,000 views. I closed comments in 2019 because, although most comments were positive, some comments labeled those who found solace in this post as foolish, unchristian, ungodly heretics. I’m reopening comments for 2020 and will delete any comments which denigrate others. Use the contact form to email me directly. ~Barb

Photo credit: Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

The Emergence of Hope, Part One (Camino Fiction)

Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

Martha is walking. Always walking. Although the sun is shining, for now, yesterday’s rain is still very much present in the deep Meseta mud and the puddles. Her shoes are muddy. The hems of her pants are muddy. Her mood is muddy.

What the hell am I doing out here? Martha thought, not for the first time and almost certainly not for the last time.

“You’re here to heal,” said the Voice.

Oh, God. Not you again. And what does healing look like? Healing looks like wholeness, and connection to Source, and health. So that’s wholeness, holiness, and health, right?

The Old English root* is very happy right now. As she walks, she takes those words one by one.

Wholeness. Opposite of split apart. When something’s whole, everything is attached and doing its job. Wholeness has good boundaries – intact boundaries. There’s an “in” and an “out.” I know what is inside me and what’s not inside me. I know what’s me and what isn’t me. And I feel and am aware of ALL of me. I don’t split off the shadowy parts – the parts that remember bad stuff and feel shitty.

 And what does “feel shitty” mean? It means feel sad and hurt and small and powerless. That sounds like childhood stuff. Wholeness means feeling the feelings of the little girl hearing her brother being beaten; watching her dad drive away with her cats to the pound; losing her dad, brother, sister, and mom – oh, my – that’s deep pain. And no one saw me. No one cared. It’s the anger at being powerless and invisible, too. So “wholeness” means welcoming and loving those memories and that knowledge. Wholeness is gathering in ALL of me in and feeling those feelings. Wholeness is care for ALL of me – body, mind, soul, emotions.

Walking and thinking. Thinking and walking. That’s Martha’s Camino, today.

Holiness – knowing I’m going to die?! Being open to the More in which I live and move and have my being. Trusting what I know from that place in me that’s connected to ALL THAT IS. Holiness is fostering that connection, or is that “health”? Health is everything I do that fosters holiness and wholeness. And there’s actually a lot of overlap between wholeness and holiness. Holiness underlies wholeness. Holiness is the foundation of wholeness. Wholeness without holiness is struggle. It’s knowing that I’m held in Love that makes wholeness possible – it’s faith in the ultimate okay-ness that allows me to invite the memories and the old feelings back into the light. The submerged and frozen feelings – like a chest freezer in my chest! A good place for a chest freezer, right?

She is suddenly afraid of her post-Camino life. Eventually she’ll have to stop walking, right? Eventually she’ll get to Santiago, or Finisterre, or run out of money, or her body will give out somehow, and she’ll have to face her future. A wave of panic sweeps through her – heart racing, breath shaky, hands quivering, skin sweating – what will she do with herself when this is over?

The Voice asks a question: “Sweetheart, what do you WANT to do?”

And she knows that the roots of the panic are in the old tension between doing what she thought she should do and what she wanted to do. It’s been a long time since she’s known what she wants to do. Really, truly, deep in the core of her being wants to do. A very long time.

Martha understands her job now: pay attention to what she really, truly, deep down in the core of her being wants. And the parts of her that she split off – the girl with the sadness – have wisdom for her. The girl who knows what she wanted got left behind – frozen in the chest freezer – for safekeeping, it turns out. She’s there, along with powerlessness, invisibility, anger, and deep hurt. She’s so sad and wounded. She’s lying in there, all curled up, covered in frost, eyes closed.

If I thaw her out I’ll be a crazy person. But she knows what I really, truly want deep down in the core of my being. She knows. Did I put her in the freezer? No, I did not. I didn’t know she was there. I didn’t know I was there. She’s a part of me.

 Okay, then.

Martha walks off the path and sits on a rock in the sun. She reaches into the chest freezer and picks up the frozen girl child. The child is solid and sturdy. And cold. So cold.

Martha cradles this girl to her body, gently stroking her, putting her warm cheek against the child’s frozen face, and waits. Hours pass. She notices, for the first time, that she’s surrounded by bright red poppies. Poppies everywhere, white daisies and sky-blue cornflowers mixed in. The Meseta breeze blows. The flowers sway. The trees in the distance move, too, and she feels the warm air on her skin.

* Our modern English words heal, health, whole, and holy all find their root in the Old English word hāl, which means “healthy and entire.”

Ordination

Swallowtail on thistle

 

ORDINATION

You say you’re waiting for permission.

You say you’re waiting for direct orders from an irrefutable voice.

A voice from Heaven:                                                                                                         This is my daughter, in whom I am well pleased.                                                                     Listen to her.

An ancient ritual, laden with pomp and circumstance-                                                   Proper form and order.

An ordination with weighty words and codified gestures,                                           Performed by men wearing heavy gowns and rings of gold,                                             Who seal decrees with wax.

You on your knees                                                                                                               On the floor of a long narrow dusty hall                                                                            Ruled by straight lines.

 

My love, that’s not how this works.

My ordination comes through rock and stars.

This holiness is swimming in the mighty river welling up in you that will not be dammed.

This holiness strips your old tough too-small skin from your body with gentle-edged hands you’ve forgotten you had.

This holiness is living in new thin porous skin permeable to excruciating joy.

I consecrated you with blood and salt water at your birth.                                                      I bestow upon you daily ordinations.                                                                                        I tell you of your belonging every moment.

Hear my voice in the pine wind, songs of birds and frogs, and laughter.                             Feel my hand as butterflies and bees, sun on skin, feet in cold river.                               See me in seasons’ spiral, cycles of day and night, everyday dying and rising.

Your sweat and tears taste like ocean.

You know my wordless urge and tug in a baby’s cry and the need of a friend.Or a stranger.

 

Here’s your permission:                                                                                               Daughter, you are here.

You’re flesh of my flesh and                                                                                              bone of my bone.                                                                                                           Breath of my breath.                                                                                                         Blood of my blood.

I feed your body with my body.

Anoint yourself with oil and honey.

Stand up, and walk.

Do your work.