Treasured Transmissions and Temporary Tattoos

I’ve never considered myself quite cool enough to have a tattoo, but currently, over my left triceps, the word “bad,” a bit blurry and a little smudged, still lingers a week after surgery… as a reminder of just how quickly our lives can change. Not at all unlike the ashes we will soon receive on our foreheads.

 

During those first few painful nights as I recovered from a busted wrist after being rudely taken down by a slick patch of black ice, I lay wide awake in the middle of the night with so many thoughts in my head. “I am so stupid. Why me? Why now?” Cliché, I know.

 

At that point, I wasn't really addressing God. I was taking full responsibility for both the accident and the healing. And then, sometime around day two or maybe three, it hit me how dependent I really was as I tried to navigate the world with right arm only. That’s when the pity party got underway. And, not gonna lie, it wasn't pretty.
 
I’m not proud to admit this, nor do I expect any emotional response from you in making this confession. God knows, we’re all carrying something - some things, heavier than any of us can imagine. But perhaps there is something here that might resonate. Perhaps there’s a morsel of something to carry us into a holy Lent together in the hope of initiating lasting changes to our lives with Christ.

 

Call me crazy, but I think Ash Wednesday might just be my favorite day in our church calendar. Ash Wednesday is when we’re called to get really real with ourselves and God. We’re called to acknowledge our most frustrating fallibility, our limitations, and our maddeningly inconvenient mortality, before God and one another. Ash Wednesday can be intense. And I humbly submit to you, with “good” arm outstretched, that it can also be a gift.
 
As we enter into our holy Lent, we are called to perennial practices like prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Perhaps you already have a Lenten intention or practice in mind as we gather this Ash Wednesday to ponder our finitude and our walk with Jesus on this perilous and potentially slippery slope that is this life. If you do, wonderful! Thanks be to God. 

 

If not, I got you.
 
Thanks be to God for EarPods and YouTube videos of Father Thomas Keating, who accompanied me through several of those first painful, sleepless nights when I just couldn’t seem to get comfortable. One of the founders of the contemporary contemplative prayer movement, I love Fr. Thomas for many reasons, not least of which is that he reminds me of my dad. His humor, his kindness, and his voice all conjure memories of my earthly father, and so it wasn’t difficult to imagine our heavenly father as, perhaps, somehow responsible for this treasured transmission. As I listened to his talks during those long, pain-soaked nights, Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew came alive for me. “Go into your room and shut the door,” Jesus says to his followers.^[1] 

Poor, first-century hearers of these words would have been lucky to have a door, let alone a room, so we can be modestly certain Jesus was speaking symbolically. Go inside yourself. Shut down any distractions. Quiet the monkey mind, as best you can. Just be with me in the stillness. 

 

Feels like peace to me.
 
Unless it doesn’t. Often, it can feel more like chaos in that room, Keating warns. What comes up can be incredibly painful to encounter. Keating calls these arisings our emotional programs for happiness, our human desire for control, esteem, and power, the very temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness after his baptism. 
 
I’ve listened to Keating speak on this passage from the Gospel of Matthew many times before, but suddenly it became very personal. Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love to feel powerful and in control? Who doesn’t want to be admired and looked up to? These days, the problem seems so pervasive, almost intractable. And yet, Keating is optimistic that this “disease of the human condition, or the false self, which is apt to trample on the rights and needs of others, can be dismantled through contemplative practice.”^[2]

 

Jesus was so smart. He had a way of knowing just when to step away from the outside world, to be still, and reconnect with God. As author Caroline Oakes puts it, this regular practice prepared Jesus to “respond to demanding and confrontational situations, not with reflexive flight, fight overreactions, but with intentional statements and actions of deep listening, compassion and insight…grounded in the presence and grace of God.”^[3]

 

Thank God for Lent, which invites us to pause. Thank God, even, for seemingly inopportune opportunities to stop and reexamine our relationship with the Creator of the universe, to look squarely at that which distracts us and tempts us to conform to the stressors of this age. Thank God for the gift of contemplative practices, which Thomas Keating calls divine therapy, that can help wake us up and transform our minds and hearts. (See Romans 12:2) But wait, there’s more: According to Harvard researcher Sara Lazar, PhD, regular meditation can also help reduce stress and improve our brain health.

 

If you feel called to practice Contemplative Prayer this Lent, here’s a link with more information. Or check out Insight Timer for lots of free guided meditations, like this one. And this one designed as a daily Lenten practice.

 
I thank God for Ash Wednesday and for the temporary discomfort that reminds me of just how much I need God. And for temporary tattoos, reminders of our mortality and immortality. We can wash them off, hoping against hope to remember what they signify. But we probably won’t - not for long anyway.

Amen💛

---

^[1] “- YouTube,” accessed February 14, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=C26_5h3TmrEV5wgN&t=217&v=x_3pGUmFhVs&feature=youtu.be.

^[2] Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation (New York: Continuum, 1995), 153.

^[3] Caroline Oakes, Practice the Pause: Jesus’ Contemplative Practice, New Brain Science, and What It Means to Be Fully Human, 1st ed (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2023), 15.2023), 15.

Intention Setting in Lent

 Intention setting is an important part of Lent. It’s the intention we make that initiates the GPS for our journey. When we plug in an address, we are presented with a route. We can mindfully travel toward our destination by following the directions we are given as we go. Sometimes we are met with an obstacle, a tree down across the road if you will. Thanks to updated technology our intelligent GPS system reroutes us. Therefore, paying attention is crucial, lest we miss a turn.

You will want to choose your intention with care and then pay close attention. If you give up chocolate because it is a distraction, then notice daily what arises as you gradually learn to do without. You could choose another intention, adding a contemplative practice, for example.

Deprivation is never God’s intention for our lives. Rather, it is lavish, unconditional love. Everything is there for the enhancement of our spiritual journey. 

Everything. 

Lent is not for the faint-hearted

Lent is not for the faint-hearted.
It demands that we, like Thomas,
put our hand into the side of the crucified Christ.

Lent is a journey towards the cross, a journey of enlightenment:
from wilderness to feast,
from desert to oasis.

It’s an attempt to identify with the powerless and the suffering in the world.

Lent is not tidy.
The days grow longer,*
the ground thaws, there’s mud and dirt everywhere and the windows need cleaning.

Lent is a journey.
So at the end of Lent
we should expect to find ourselves somewhere different from where we started.

Lent can be an opportunity
to explore what is the nature
of the promised Kingdom of God on earth that we long for;
a time to discern
how we are called to work for it.

No, Lent is not for the faint-hearted!

~~Kate McIlhagga

*‘Lent’ means lengthen.

💛With Love in Lent,

Connie

That Still Small Voice

For this week’s yoga classes we are working to remove obstacles to hearing our inner voices more clearly. Our deepest knowing is always for our highest good.  Some people might call that still small inner voice the higher self. Some call it intuition. I call it God. In this video with my dear friend and priest Dina Van Klaveran she says that God is always talking to us. It’s our job to clear away those things that get in the way of hearing that voice. For me, yoga helps. Meditation and contemplation helps. Yoga’s not a problem for me. I teach so I have to practice. And I do love the practice and the way it makes my body feel; flexible, relaxed and free to move about the world. Sitting still and meditating is a whole different thing.

We know the benefits of meditation and quieting the mind. It reduces stress and can be healing on all levels; spiritual, emotional, mental and physical. Blood pressure can lower which affects the health of so many of our organs. Our brain function is enhanced with meditation, helping with addictions, progressive diseases of the brain and body like Parkinsons, Alzheimers and dementia. There is much research to back this up and this video with Dr. Sara Lazar was especially enlightening to me back when I was just learning to be a yoga teacher.

I have become quite proficient at meditation procrastination. It’s a thing. Here are just some of the many distractions I will create to avoid meditating. I will…

cook

eat

drink wine

clean out my closet

talk on the phone

text

watch HGTV

online shop

listen to audiobooks, podcasts

run/walk while I listen to audiobooks, podcasts

think about meditating

ruminate about not meditating

almost everything else

Any of these familiar to you? Can you add to the list? Go for it!

Hearing that still small voice has become even more important for me, especially as I age and feel the need to tune in more deeply to stay present to my body to prevent injury, to know what my body needs for nourishment and, most importantly for me,  to stay connected to the Creator, the source of my spiritual guidance. 

Several years ago I planned to go to New York City to visit my daughter Caroline who had only been there for a couple of weeks to pursue her acting career. Dropping her off in that huge city was difficult for me and her father, as you can imagine. She was young and full of innocence and ambition. I prayed she was listening to that still small voice to keep her safe as she walked the streets off Manhattan, especially at night. 

As I got ready to get in my car to head for the BWI train station, I heard a small voice telling me to go back in the house and grab the flip camera ( I loved my Flip. It was HD 1080P, excellent sound and video, and had a handy USB port for easy transfer to the computer. How I miss my Flip!) on the kitchen counter. It was very specific instruction so I paid attention. I put the camera in my purse and headed out to board the  9 AM train to NYC. Little did I know that later on that day on the corner of 45th and 9th (or 10th) Ave. my daughter would get her first offer to be in a Broadway show. Had I not been paying attention to that still small voice I wouldn’t have had my Flip with me (my phone was a flip phone too at that time. No video on that ancient device!) and I wouldn’t have been able to whip it out and take this precious video which let us share her contagious, very genuine joy with family and friends. I remember someone asking me if she was acting in this video. I had to laugh. It was the realest real deal. It was a moment to savor and, because I listened I was able to capture it on video. I did edit it a bit and add a recording she had previously made of her singing the role she would soon be playing in Wicked on Broadway.

I have had many other experiences like this, but this one stands out for me as particularly special. Sometimes our still small voice doesn’t get our attention and it might start speaking louder until it manifests as a problem. And sometimes, as Oprah used to like to say on her show, it hits you like a brick right upside the head! That’s never fun.

It’s much easier to listen to and respond promptly to the quiet, loving nudge in the direction of our best life.

Mary Oliver says it so well in her famous poem The Journey:

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

So we practice. I am sorry to say we have to keep up the practice. I wish it were easier. So I am recommitting to my meditation practice, starting this week. If you have a Lenten practice, this might coincide nicely for you. 

Here’s to that still small voice. May we be open to the sweet whisper from the One who loves us so dearly and only wants what’s best for us. May we be still enough, often enough, to discern that voice from the louder, harsher voices that intrude on our peace from a very broken world. And may we all know that peace, the true peace that passes all understanding and pass it around as needed.

Peace and Namaste.