Where the Old Ways Wait

Virtue does not consist in making good resolutions, nor in saying fine words, but in keeping one’s resolutions and carrying out one’s good intentions.   ~  St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

          January has gone, taking with it half of moody February. It’s only now that I’ve had the chance to step back from frantic work and still myself to look up at the skies. What does God wish of me this Lent, I wonder. The week is far from over but I’m already in the next, prising at a door that remains closed.

          Do the things you should, St Margaret Mary seems to be saying to me, tugging me back to the now. After a time, I get what she means. There have been some habits and intentions that have fallen by the wayside of life since old November, some by necessity and some by neglect. But now, it’s time to return to them, to pick them up and weave them back into my hours, where they belong. The daily walks. The gentle reading. A Pathway Under the Gaze of Mary, a long waited for book, my husband’s Christmas gift to me and Distilled Genius, the new Susan Branch book also gifted to me by a precious friend. Two special books calling out to me to sink my heart into them, for in them lie hidden words God wishes for me to know for the season that is and that is to come. Tending to a garden gone wild because I could not find the heart for it for ever so long now. The quiet wait by the trees, listening to the winds chatter among the firs, allowing them to lift my spirit to the heart of God.

          In the midst of January’s madness a few weeks back, a sign had impossibly pierced my heart.

Of a coming rest in February

Surrounded by mountains and hills that defied levelling, a February rest didn’t seem possible then. But now, a wind has begun blowing, its rushes and whispers sweeping away the mists, uncovering a forgotten path, hidden till now.

          Beckoning,

Step by the wayside

Where the old ways wait

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