And so we begin!

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of new Lenten practices (and maybe some of them will stay year-round), and the first of them will be "conscious" reading.  By that I mean something more than the skimming way that I read most novels.  I mean slow, careful reading of spiritually important works, including but not limited to the Bible - a new way of reading inspired by the tradition of lectio divina, taking my time to think about what I'm reading, and incorporating prayer and contemplation into my reading life.

I haven't had much of a prayer life lately, and despite my office lined with books, I haven't had as much of a reading life as I did in years past.  Maybe the belt-tightening circumstances of the moment are a way to shepherd me back to the riches of all these unread or partly-read books, just waiting for me.

The book I'm reading first is called Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices by the famous (and somewhat controversial)  Brian McLaren.  From the description I'd read, I thought that Phyllis Tickle was a co-author, but she merely wrote the Foreword.  And in that Foreword, she points out how the urge for something new, different, even revolutionary, something to awaken and revitalize the church, leads us circling back to the ways of those who came before us.  We are not so much discovering as rediscovering, but then again, isn't that always true?  I'm pretty sure that it's true of me, right now.