From the Hermitage - First Friday of Lent

I heard something on Oprah's radio soul class this morning and thought: there's today's meditation. Then I went about my day and forgot whatever it was that I had been so taken with in the first place. Lost the thought Later in the day, I lost an earring, prayed to St Anthony and walked right outside, in the snow, and found it in the road. I never did remember that first meditation, but St Anthony is a good friend of the Bristol-Holden family and worthy of consideration here. Long ago, I heard a priest talk about the many aspects of St Anthony (patron of lost objects and husbands - I have always wondered if the husbands were lost, too) for the many things we lose along the way: we lose our faith, we lose our youth, our waistlines, we lose our belief in happy endings. And the thing is, while we contemplate praying to St Anthony for our many and various losses, we can use Lent to celebrate loss: we can lose our pettiness, our pinched spirits. We can lose our incapacity for wonder, we can lose our capacity for cynicism. We can lose our differences, our barriers, our fears, the fences around our hearts. We can lose the old versions of stories that imprison us in our past. We can lay our burdens down.