Spirituality

My Pagan Lent: Long Ritual Bares the Many Gifts of Time

DAY 12

As part of My Pagan Lent I decided to hand write some letters to friends. I’ve focused on those who don’t live near to me because if I were physically with them the most precious offering I could make to them would be my time. I would make that offering over hours of sipping tea or a long hike, or perhaps a night out. As I can’t give them my time in this way, I will give them my time as a hand-written letter. If you haven’t penned out a hand written letter in a while, try it. You will come to understand how detailing your life through actual written words on paper is indeed a devotion of time.

While I was searching for envelopes in which to place these letters I came across a little box. I opened it and found a rosary I had obtained about four years ago. Four years marks the amount of time that has passed since a close friend of mine died. I bought the rosary to say for him during his final months as he was a devote Catholic and a practitioner of the rosary. Praying a full rosary takes a lot of time too.

As my Lenten practice heads through day twelve, the day of the full moon in this cycle, I can’t help reflect on the passage of time the moon offers every month. How its consistency has been a point of grounding and reverence for every generation of humans that have existed on this planet.

Day twelve of forty is rapidly coming to a close and the power of the long ritual (those that take place across many days or weeks) is unfolding. When you practice long ritual you get an opportunity to practice contemplation over and over and over. At some point in the ritual you come to never break your contemplation. As you pass through more days, the awakenings deepen as your ability to contemplate strengthens. You enter into a special realm where things that you once took for granted become consequential again. Your ability to listen for the lessons of these forgotten moments and alchemize them into your life grows like the little sprouts underneath the spring soil are growing. By day forty those sprouts of awakening crane toward the warm spring sun. Gathering energy to flower later in the season.

This is the magic of Time during Lent. It takes center stage in service to the slow evolution of our soul, so that we too may crane toward the sun.

Blessings of Time to you my friend.

© Kathryn A. Dickel 2023