A little background: at Christmas I used a 12 days of Christmas meditation practice called Holy Birthings. Thank you, Sue Ellen for posting it on FB. A suggestion was to choose a mentor for this year, read all about the person and reflect on what he or she had to tell me. I chose Hildegard of Bingen. I take a verse of one her songs, put it in my journal and then write about its meaning for me today ~ Hildegard was a 12th century mystic. During Lent I think I will share some of those reflections with you. Hildegard has many names for the Divine. This particular one begins with the traditional Father. This is really unusual for her and I leave it as she wrote it.

Father,

Great is our need and we beg,

we beg with a word that was

fullness within us:

look again.

It is fitting - let your word

look again and that we fail not,

that your name be not

darkened within us.

Tell us your name again

lest we forget.

Appropriate I think for the beginning of Lent, a time to slow down, to meditate and contemplate. A time to look again for the divine within us and make sure we have not forgotten that name that called us into being in love.

I know I do not always remember. I go about my daily life, I pray, I live, and the ordinariness is there: dishes, laundry, feed and walk the dog, read, greet, discuss, just doing all those things that make up life. And sometimes I forget that I am divine, made that way by the Divine who called me into being in love. I forget to say Thank You or be in gratitude for all that is and might be and all the Love that continues to surround me and give me grace. Awareness is a good thing ~ and to be aware of my blessings and my blessedness is a good way to move through Lent. Slow down enough to be aware.