Day 29-34 (Monday-Saturday)

To be honest I've been dissappointed in my lack of enthusiasm or interest in Lent

this week. Maybe that is the benefit of this prolonged time, to show me that after the

novelty wears off I am not as committed as I think (something proven often)?

This week has been mainly focussed on my work and travelling and has included a

few social situations, where I have really missed not being able to drink alcohol.

Sadly my attitude about this has fluctuated

between really foul and self pitying to being really

self righteous and pompous. I really am so much

worse than I hope sometimes - often after the

novelty has worn off or I have nothing to gain by

how I am perceived (I care too much what others

think - still after all these years).

This disturbing revelation as to how selfish my

attitudes are has reminded me of a poem on an

album called 'Shipwrecks & Islands' that I've

enjoyed for several years. It goes like this:

"Those of us who have mapped out the geography of ourselves, know what a

dispiriting exercise this can be. We start off OK, marching boldly towards the edge

of our talent or our good will or our patience or our generosity and then suddenly

we are brought up short by a precipice, usually at the point when we were just

beginning to believe that the firm ground would go on forever. Setting off in a

different direction we find that exactly the same thing happens, in fact it happens

again and again and again. Until we start to learn that there is a shape and a limit to

what we are.

For some this is a welcome piece of learning. 'Settle down', 'get on with it', they say.

But for others, those with the blood of explorers in their veins it is a kind of prison a

kind of island. We look for enough compassion to truly care about the world and we

find a pathetically limited ability to place our arms around the suffering of others. We

search for the strength of will to set ourselves and those we hate free from chains of

resentment and bitterness, only to find weakness and a cherishing of hurts. We hunt

within our hearts for the courage to fight when everything in us wants to lie down

and for the obedience to wait quietly when we are full of anger. But we discover

instead a self indulgence that will have what it is greedy for. We stand on the shore

of our own lives calling out to God that we can go nowhere unless he makes a way."

Ah yes, maybe that is the lesson; tough though it is for me to accept...