<p>Pastoral Liturgical Teaching and Social Justice Moments brought to you by&nbsp;DignityUSA.</p><p>Breath of the Spirit is our electronic spiritual and liturgical resource for our members and potential members. Nothing can replace your chapter or other faith community but we hope you will find further support here for integrating your spirituality with your sexuality and all the strands of your life.</p><p><em>Traditional Lenten practices of fasting almsgiving and prayer can inspire both devotion and derision depending on how one views this season traditionally connected to self-denial. But whatever practices characterizes our Lent they are certainly meant to help us see the world with new eyes to help us see Love anew in our midst. Todays reflection suggests that our seeing can be renewed simply by noticing the constant presence of Love in our world. God speaking in creating as happens in the burning bush should not be seen as the exceptional miraculous moment but rather as part and parcel of living in our Divinely creating milieu. The Word of Love is constantly being spoken Lent comes round to help us notice.</em></p><div class=oldwebkit><h3><strong>March 20 2022: The Third Sunday of Lent</strong></h3><p><strong>Exodus 3:1-8 13-15</strong></p><p><strong>Psalm 103:1-2 3-4 6-7 8 11</strong></p><p><strong>1 Corinthians 10:1-6 10-12</strong></p><p><strong>Luke 13:1-9</strong></p><p><em>(Note: if your community is welcoming individuals into the Catholic Church with the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults then you may have different readings from Year A. These are from the current liturgical calendar Year C.)</em></p><h3><strong>The Constant Voice of Love</strong></h3><p><em>A reflection by Jeff Vomund</em></p><p>I tend to miss things. I am not much of a detail person. I am more naturally drawn to the big picture. When I walk into a room I notice immediately if it feels safecomfortablecalm. The color of the couch or the pictures on the wall? I generally have no idea. It is not uncommon for me to organize a picnic but forget to buy plastic cups for the drinks or the plastic knives and forks. I am so excited about the party that I miss some critical detail of preparation. I tend not to notice the lack of some vital supply until it is just about time to use it.</p><p>My annoying capacity for not noticing comes to mind whenever I read todays first reading: the burning bush. Most of us know the popular version of the story. Moses is tending his father-in-laws sheep in the land of Moab. After an early life of incredible privilege Moses ran away from Egypt because he murdered an Egyptian who had beaten an Israelite. Now Moses is in a foreign land far away from the Israelites and their slavery. Suddenly there appears a burning bush on fire but not being consumed. God speaks to Moses and that changes everything.</p><p>I think we naturally assume that what is different in this scene is that the bush was burning. Finally after generations of slavery God decided to ring Moses up and have a conversation but I wonderWhy did God wait so long? Were the previous years of suffering not important? Had it not gotten bad enough until then? Was the Source of All Life willing to let generations be persecuted until the Divine plan was ready to be enacted? None of that sounds like a loving God to me. None of that strikes me as worthy of the One who holds each life in a gentle and caressing palm. Maybe what changed was not that the bush was finally burning. God was finally ready to talk. Perhaps what precipitated this critical conversation was that Moses finally noticed.</p><p>I want to suggest this passage is not about Love finally asking for a moment but rather a Love which had been screaming itself hoarse in protest of human slavery for generations when the right person finally noticed. Similarly much of the world is outraged by the senseless violence of Vladimir Putins assault on the Ukrainian people. But surely Love has also cried in anguish for the nearly 20 years that the government sponsored Janjaweed have been perpetrating ethnic cleansing on native Darfuri peoples in the Sudan. For whatever reasons political cultural racist or otherwise Western society at large has only now moved to act with significant resources. Love has not been patiently waiting until the Ukrainians are endangered to be on fire against unprovoked state-sponsored killing. We finally noticed.</p><p>The constant is Love speaking in and through our experience of creation and one another. The variable is our noticing. To be clear I am not suggesting that when we finally hear Loves voice it is always crying out in injustice. How many times have I rushed past a beautiful sunrise but been too preoccupied with my own internal arguments to let God speak to me through the rising light? How many times have I sat down to a full meal surrounded by friends and not taken the time to be moved by the generations of grace upon which such a seemingly quotidian encounter is dependent? These questions could go on ad infinitum: When do I not hear the call of Love when a student needs some (perhaps inconvenient) assistance? How often do I let the first beautiful stretch of the morning as my muscles reawaken and gloriously begin to make room for more oxygen-rich blood pass without a recognition of the new life that Love has given? How often does someone or something tweak my emotions but too busy I push it out of my consciousness and keep moving?</p><p>Similarly in todays gospel Jesus interlocutors are looking for signs of Gods will in this or that tragedy but Jesus is having none of it. Instead Jesus notes that the call to repentance is always with us. No less an authority than the Second Vatican Council says as much. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World one reads the earthly and the heavenly city penetrate each other (40:3). Again the constant is Loves speaking the variable is hearing.</p><p>These reminders always lead me to several uncomfortable questions perhaps particularly appropriate to ask oneself during Lent: How am I creating the space in my life to listen to the ever-outpouring Word of Life that Love speaks into existence? Do I live such that I can regularly hear Loves call to me? What changes in my life would help me listen more attentively to the world (and people) around me?</p><p>For me these are the critical questions posed by Moses burning bush as well as my own golden forsythia now so beautifully in bloom. What is Love saying to me in those vibrant yellow flowers? In the early morning cutting open of an avocado? In the call to my parents?</p><p>All of this reminds me of a short few lines from the Aurora Leigh Elizabeth Barrett Brownings great epic poem. Here she notices:&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</p><blockquote><p><em>Earths crammed with heaven</em></p><p><em>And every comment bush afire with God;</em></p><p><em>But only [the one] who sees take off [their] shoes</em></p><p><em>The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.</em></p></blockquote><p>May we too take good notice of the fires of Love lit all around our lives.</p></div><div class=mobile-full></div><div style=text-align:right class=mobile-full><em></em></div><p></p><p></p><div style=text-align:left class=mobile-full><em>J</em><em>eff Vomund is a member of Dignity/Washington and currently lives in Arlington VA. After 15+ years of full-time parish ministry and 7 years of teaching students with particular learning needs Jeff now works at George Mason University as a Graduate Research Assistant and a Graduate Lecturer while pursuing a Ph.D. in </em><em>Educational Psychology.</em><em> <br></em></div><div style=text-align:left class=mobile-full><em></em></div><div style=text-align:left class=mobile-full><em></em></div><p></p><p></p> <p style=text-align:center><a class=btn btn-primary href=https://www.dignityusa.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe>Subscribe to Breath of the Spirit</a></p>