Last Friday afternoon I was sitting in my living room, basking in some quiet time with a book. The sun was streaming through the window reflecting off some crystal snowflakes we have in our windows, creating rainbows on the walls and ceiling. A fire glowed in the fireplace. I had the fleeting thought that things were very calm, orderly, nice. It is after all January,the time to hibernate and hunker down, to be reflective and eat comforting foods….mostly those that also add fat to protect us from the freezing temperatures.

So carrying that good feeling forward, it may seem odd that we decided to tear apart our downstairs bathroom and do some remodeling, mostly cosmetic, nothing too big. But what was a nice, orderly environment now has a basket here, a bin there, filled with all the ‘stuff’ from the bathroom, the floor in torn down to the ‘ugly’, the unhinged door is in the hallway and the new vanity and sink sits in the dining room. An appropriate questions might be: What were we thinking?

It was in that frame of mind that I sat down to do some reading about Lent. Lent, if you haven’t thought about it, begins next week, very, very early, as we who work in the church know too well. "Lent’s simplifications re-awaken me to awareness of how I feel when life’s circumstances and patterns get rearranged. What has been is no longer what is. Space opens toward something new.", writes Jeannette Bakke in this edition of Thin Places.

Choosing to tear up our bathroom is a minor, somewhat trivial rearrangement of our normal pattern of life. Yet, it calls us to respond in new ways to the how we do our daily living. There are many I know that are experiencing a much deeper sense of rearrangement in their lives. Illness has come to live at their house. Death and grief has made a home in their midst. Fear and uncertainty is a constant companion. What has been is no longer what is. What is new is not yet known.

Sometimes we choose rearrangement, sometimes it chooses us. It is the unfolding nature of living. How we walk with it, how we live into it, can be a matter of faith, of hope, of letting go, letting be. There is no one right answer. For me, there is an awareness of the Sacred that lives in the crevices and shadows of the spaces of our daily walk. That can make a world of difference. I pray it does.

"All shall be well…all shall be well…and all manner of things shall be well." Julian of Norwich