I’ve been meaning all day to write something here, but life has interfered, and now here it is 9 at night. The day is past, and even evening, and we’re into the dark and cold hours of night.
This, perhaps, is why we focus on Lent. This is why we need it. Because life interferes so very often, and our attention drifts to things that are emergencies but not necessarily important, and we forget. We forget that we are God’s beloved children, and that our journey is with God from beginning to end. We forget that we breathe God and good and love with every breath.
This season of Lent, as I try to remind myself of these things and so much more, I hope to write here more often. I invite you to journey along with me, and maybe share prayers or poems or thoughts of your own. For now, here’s a poem that I found on the website www.journeywithjesus.net:
The Journey with Jesus: Poems and Prayers
Selected by Dan Clendenin
Anna Kamienska (1920–1986)
Those Who Carry
Those who carry pianos
to the tenth floor wardrobes and coffins
an old man with a bundle of wood limps beyond the horizon
a woman with a hump of nettles
a madwoman pushing a pram
full of vodka bottles
they will all be lifted
like a gull’s feather like a dry leaf
like an eggshell a scrap of newspaper
Blessed are those who carry
for they shall be lifted.
Translated from the Polish by David Curzon, in David Curzon (ed.), The Gospels in Our Image; An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company), p. 80.