Black Belt Spirituality

If you have ever read my blog, I hope you have, you may know that I attempt blog my way through Lent. So beginning with Ash Wednesday I may post a reflection, or a thought, or maybe a video that has a spiritual or religious meaning I feel fits with Lent. Sometime, because of the busyness of simply being clergy I may only post a scripture verse.  In looking over my blogs (Black Belt Spirituality and Yes We Can) I noticed that they were written in my own wilderness experience. A wilderness experience of divorce, self doubt and feelings of worthlessness. And not that they were clouded by that experience, they were definitely shaped by that. Ok, they were clouded a little bit.  I am amazed at how walking through the season of Lent for the past few years has shaped me and given me a deeper understanding of what it means to walk through the darkness of the valley of ones spiritual life and death. Lent will continue to be a valued time of year for me, and I feel blessed...

Growing up as a kid, like many kids, I paid no mind the the church  calendar. Unless it was Christmas. I was a kid after all. When I was in high school, I began to explore my faith. I was enrolled in a Catholic school, while being confirmed into a Presbyterian Church.  That's when I began to notice the weird (to me) practice every Lent of my classmates walking around with smudges of ash on their forehead.  So what exactly is Ash Wednesday.  For some of my Protestant friends, yes I agree, there is no biblical directive for us to celebrate Ash Wednesday. Just like there isn't a directive to celebrate Christmas or Easter. But there is at its core a great biblical theology of creation, sin, our mortality, grace and death.  It calls us to community in our shared brokenness and the humility of our mortality.  The last few Ash Wednesdays I have spent imposing ashes in a major Hospital in the City. The same hospital that I did my chapl...