“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
  The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
  Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
  Isolated, with no before and after,
  But a lifetime burning in every moment
  And not the lifetime of one man only
  But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
  There is a time for the evening under starlight,
  A time for the evening under lamplight
  (The evening with the photograph album).
  Love is most nearly itself
  When here and now cease to matter.
  Old men ought to be explorers
  Here or there does not matter
  We must be still and still moving
  Into another intensity
  For a further union, a deeper communion
  Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
  The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
  Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”

–TS Eliot, “East Coker” from The Four Quartets

“Search the darkness

Sit with your friends, don’t go back to sleep.
Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.
Surge like an ocean, don’t scatter yourself like a storm.
Life’s waters flow from darkness. Search the darkness, don’t run from
it.
Night travelers are full of light, and you are too:
       don’t leave this companionship.
Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish, don’t slip into the dirt like
quicksilver.
The moon appears for night travelers, be watchful when the moon is
full.”

–Jelaluuddin Rumi (Persian Sufi poet born 1207c.e.)

This Lent, allow yourself to be reflective, to find some fallow time
each day to stop and notice what you are feeling, what the world looks
like at your fingertips, what the moment brings to you as blessing and
asks of you as challenge. If you are young, likely the temptation is to
hide in infinite distraction and entertainment – all the noise, color
and bustle of the beautiful and demanding world. Spend ten minutes a
day with everything turned off, perhaps even in the darkness and
silence, with no intention other than to simply be there and nowhere
else ith your full attention. If you are older, perhaps you may want to
ponder that provocative invitation of Eliot’s, “Old men/women should be explorers…still moving into another intensity, for a further union, a
deeper communion.” What might this mean for you now? I am reminded of St. Paul’s words: “What we may be (might be becoming) does not yet
appear…” so, as the tempest of these times swirls around us, we wait
for it with patience, wonder, curiosity and above all courage.

The age-old tools for seeking God and preparing for the future remain:
fasting (pausing from eating, but also eating mindfully, eating simply,
eating “lower on the food chain”, eating less, giving alms generously,
self-examination (repentance, confession, making amends), studying
Scripture, committing ourselves anew to prayer both personal and
congregational and receiving the Sacrament of Communion. They are
age-old because they have been and still are effective.