Walk Through Cedars -- Frink Centre
You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Psalm 51:6-9
I'm an early riser but I slept in to 7:00 this morning and awoke to sunshine, the first time in 2021. The days are lengthening, thanks be to the Creator, but yesterday's snowfall meant that the world was even brighter. The temperature at that early hour was a bracing -24 C, perhaps the coldest start to any day this Winter. There is a special quality to the air when it's this cold which I love and seldom experience as winter's become milder.
Our hope is to get out on our cross-country skis this afternoon after it "warm's up," if that term can be used to describe sub-zero temperatures of -5 or -6C. We're thinking of taking along a backpack of kindling to start a fire as a recognition of Ash Wednesday . We will attend an in-person, "touchless" Ash Wednesday service at Trenton United this evening, but this is an opportunity to reflect on the words of the traditional psalm for the day, Psalm 51, en plein air. In the throes on regret and contrition for his crimes of rape (Bathsheba) and murder (her husband, Uriah) King David pleads "wash me whiter than snow."
Some have been commenting that we're actually entering into the twelfth month of Lent, because of the pandemic, which is true to some extent. Yet we have found that getting outdoors in all seasons has been our "salvation" in a manner of speaking.
It may be a challenge to feel suitably penitential today when are fingers and toes aren't working at full capacity, but we'll see how it goes! We may choose to express regret for our sins and transgressions, but we rarely regret the decision to spend time in the beauty of Creation.
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