February Tomorrow

Study for “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” | Louvre Museum | Paris

Tomorrow the calendar turns to February.  I wrap my deep pink scarf around the gray days…thinking of St. Valentine and being shriven (ok…mostly pancakes) and how the Church Year has taught us to return and to re-harrow.  Circling through my  notes I find I copied Wendell Berry’s observation that “Novelty is a new kind of loneliness.”  It still rings true.  Or it rings true again.  

I’ve spent January thinking a lot about depth because of an article I chanced upon about having a "depth year.”  Instead of lives that are "an inch deep and a mile wide,” (“ready-made,” Charlotte Mason calls them)  author, David Cain  writes about his longing to go deeper into the gifts already provided. Afterwards, he decides he wants every year to be a depth year.

And why not?  His practice sparked a movement because it is a very human thing to want to seek meaning and to find time to answer the hunger of the perennial questions.  And counter-cultural.

It reminded me of our “small, quiet, steadfast, and local” efforts at prov.en.der and our annual 100 Days of Keeping…this will be our seventh year of inviting a deeper quiet, a deeper sense of mystery, a deeper gratitude for the gifts around us.  We begin February 22,  Ash Wednesday.  It’s not too soon to listen to what your heart wants more of.