Ash Wednesday – Full

Sipping my first full cup of coffee of the day, I enter into my morning ritual. Or perhaps I should say rituals. Drinking coffee is the first one, and the oldest. Is it the most important?

Writing is another ritual, and doing it first thing in the morning is one that I like.

Getting up to greet the brand-new day is a ritual I never imagined I would embrace – not for most of my life, when I was definitely not a morning person. However, decades of training have taught me to get up, because kids had to go to school. That was generally the reason; school isn’t on a flexible schedule. Most of my adult life I’ve had jobs that were flexible (except almost five years at ACT. And there was that one year at the Population Research Center). Most of my jobs have had flexible hours and that’s good. Because I like to take my time in the morning, it is a time of rituals.

For years the ritual involved listening to NPR in the kitchen while reading the newspaper and doing the crossword puzzle. And keeping my coffee cup full. I think I just might go back to that particular ritual – news, coffee, crossword. Beginning tomorrow, the morning paper will be delivered (with crossword). I have a kitchen counter, once again, where I can sit and listen to the radio – just like old times! I can get very nostalgic about this particular ritual.

But if I add this in, do I give something up? Because I have had the tendency to want to make my mornings too full of rituals. Coffee, prayers & scripture, journaling, creative writing, news, crossword, yoga.

Here’s the thing: morning is the one time of the day that feels open. Fresh. Like a blank slate inviting me to write freely on it. So I excitedly start to fill it up, creatively scribbling all over it – writing, reading, listening, stretching. I am cramming as much of my “free” writing on it as I possibly can.

Sooner or later it will no longer be free. It will become overly full. And what happens then? Something good? Or something bad?

I really don’t know. Probably something not so good. Because what will happen first is this: everything that wants to be free in that space will become cramped, losing its freedom. Because I don’t know where the overflow space is.

Tom Long spoke about overflow at our presbytery retreat last week. He used the word to describe the moments when the divine spills over into the ordinary, the temporal. It is lovely – and real. But I’m talking about a different kind of overflow. What happens when the divine encounters the tight restrictions of the temporal? No overflow permitted. Sad.

Taking a pause … and a sip of my coffee, I stop to think that it is just like me to dwell on the problematic aspect of this word, full. Rather than embrace the wonder of it, the gift of it. Full.

I am full of good things. I can be full of problems, if that is what I choose. But turn the glass at a different angle and see something new. 

I am full of good things – people I love, people who love and care about me. Home, beauty, creativity – so much. It’s all gift. And I am grateful for it.

In this morning space, the blank slate waiting for me to fill, I might choose to rest in it. Perhaps not try to fill it all up myself. Leave some space and see what fullness God brings in.