"God does not ask anything else of you except that you let yourself go and let God be God in you." Meister Eckhart

There is a popular phrase:"Let God and Let God." I think when most people make this statement it really means that God is charge and we just have to stop whatever we are doing to be in control of our life's circumstances. I don't doubt that it is a helpful affirmation to many people and I am happy that it brings them a certain peace.

It has never been that helpful to me because it assumes just passivity on my part. Generally I have never believed that the Holy One's movement in my life invites me to be passive. In fact, it has been my experience that the presence of Spirit usually is urging me more toward action than anything else. I am not talking about a flurry of activity movement, mind you, but an inner nudge to be so totally engaged in living that I come to know God more fully, be involved in living with my whole being. Of course this can be done without much activity at all through prayer, contemplation, meditation, observation. But the Spirit's movement can also cause us to speak out in dangerous ways, to put our life on the line, to walk the path of protest and resistance, to demand justice where injustice reigns.

These words of Meister Ekchart strike me as a perfect mantra for the first day of Lent. Today as we are marked by the ashes of last year's palms, we are invited once again to look deep within for the ways in which we have failed to be open to the presence of God not only in the little things of our daily living but in the ways in which we have failed to let God be God in us. This is not a passive surrender but an intense commitment to keep our eyes and hearts open to the presence of God in our work, our homes,our relationships, our very being.

Isn't this what the story of Lent is really about? Jesus walked the path of his life so open to God's presence that he chose to go down dangerous roads confronting difficult people, speaking his truth,putting his life on the line. He went about his daily work healing, bringing hope, witnessing to Sacred in all of Creation.  In every encounter he chose to let God be God in him.

The ashes of this day remind us that we are made of the stuff of the earth. They also remind us that we are on this amazing planet for a short time. Our real work is to be about the business of letting God be God in us.

And so Lent begins………………..