Selah

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ...Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.  ~Matthew 3:1-2,4 On this Ash Wednesday, we hear John the Baptist, the straight-talking Chariot, reminding us: From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return. Like the swords perched above the lamb on the Four of Swords, those words may seem menacing. But you can channel that lamb's inner peace... Remember where you came from. Like the tree on the Six of Cups, your ashy roots are also contain the rainbow of Divine Love. Live inside that love now as you (repent of your inaction) turn your face toward justice, (believe in the good news) envision a better world, and act with kindness to manifest it. This  life is a fleeting, magical, liminal space between two eternal ashy existences. In it, you’re alive like Temperance

“It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” —Patrick Rothfuss,  The Name of the Wind I have lots of stories in my head, about who I am, what I’ve done, what my life and its constituent pieces mean. Every one of my three (so far) tattoos has a story attached, but the one I will not always tell when strangers ask “what the tattoo means” is the story of my first tattoo.  It’s a story that started out with one (complex) meaning, andnhas taken on new shades as I’ve grown. My stories define me, I define them, and the dialectic circle goes ‘round. That’s actually a really core piece of my theology—we have to keep telling our stories, but can’t ever let them get stuck. When we do that, we’re lost. It’s part of why the liturgical year means so much to me, and why I keep returning to the Bible again and again, even though I no longer believe about it what I