Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Year A - Ash Wednesday or Self-Recognition Day

March 5, 2014

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Intentions often overwhelm Intuitions. We hedge ourselves round with rules for survival, success, and plain old acceptance by our current culture and tribe. It is so easy to forget that the current common sense is but prelude to a larger common good yet to arrive.

This is a day to recognize that our past had a consequence and it is today. Fortunately this means that tomorrow is a consequence of what we do today. Choice is still available and tomorrow is still able to be better.

When you attend to this day, do so without setting up a battle between your intention to be tribally and culturally ascendant and your insightful intuition that better is tied to our deep heart’s core.

Remember your place of peace and let your hands move in multiple realms while connected to a larger satisfaction not yet arrived but drawn closer with the practiced skill of mercy, mercy, mercy.

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THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE

By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, 

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, 

I hear it in the deep heart's core. 

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Yesterday is burned and gone. Where there is naught but ash, our third eye sees through it to discern a way forward beyond repetition. Open this eye to see where hope and wholeness wend their way through the underbrush—and follow.