Wednesday, February 16, 2026: Lent: a lengthening; a leaning and a stretching. A pull towards a better kind of light.

A Blessing by John O'Donohue:

Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing.

May you enjoy the critical and creative companionship of the question

 "Who am I?" and may it brighten your longing.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and shelter your feeling.

May your mind inhabit your life with the same sureness with which your body belongs to the world.

May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.

May your soul be as free as the ever-new waves of the sea.

May you succumb to the danger of growth.

May you live in the neighborhood of wonder.

May you belong to love with wildness of Dance.

May you know that you are ever embraced in the kind circle of God.

 

Meditation on Lent and Light:

I’m observing Lent for the first time in twenty years, tentatively circling the faith that once defined me. 

My faith has changed shape with me over the years. I was Salvation Army, then Church of England. I was Pentecostal, then Post-Evangelical. Now I’m not sure what I am. More supple. Still dogged. Still reaching for the light.

A taut, thin light; a gauzy winter light. A light that’s barely there before it’s gone. Our ancestors lit fires of celebration and defiance in midwinter. Our rituals were shaped by the cycles of the year, stitched to the seasons. At Christmas, we celebrate light in the darkness. The dark time, the growing time, the dormant-but-looks-dead time. The season of hard frosts and wolves and hunger.

There was a time when light was rationed. We borrowed light with candles or lamp oil. But light was costly. Light was for the rich. When night fell, we stopped. We slept; we dreamed; we waited in the silence for the dawn.

“Lent” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “lengthen”: this season when the light is stretching further, when it’s filling out. It has more heat, more reach. The lengthening of days means a lightening of spirit.

Now that light is sudden and snaps on with a switch, we don’t notice how the daylight ebbs and shifts. I am drawn to the wrong kind of light. 

I watch my children when there is a lit screen in the room: they’re pulled towards it like moths to the moon. Me too: not so much the telly but the come-hither flicker on the corner of my Blackberry or the back-lit mac beside my bed, keeping me company.

Not bad, but I get pulled in when I should be working, sleeping, writing, digging, cooking, talking to real people in real time. I think of John O’Donohue and how there’s too much neon in our lives.

Lent: a lengthening; a leaning and a stretching. A pull towards a better kind of light.