Into the wilderness

My husband is on a business trip this week. Whenever he travels, he and our daughter have a ritual while he packs. She'll come out of her room carrying a stuffed animal and offer it to her daddy. "Here's Diddly so you won't forget me. And also, he'll watch over you." (As if he could forget his own daughter) He'll kiss her and dutifully pack the toy in his briefcase and say, "Thank you, sweetie." She'll walk off satisfied that all will be well while he's away. Then after he leaves, she'll crawl into bed with me at night and tell me that she's taking care of me for her daddy. I hope that my memory can hold fast to this for the rest of my life after the children have all grown and have lives of their own.

For this trip, my husband packed late after she went to bed. We didn't have the goodbye benediction. So yesterday, we felt a bit disoriented, that we missed something significant.

What is it about rituals that give our lives a sense of completeness? In the doing of them, we tap into something ancient as in reciting the Shema, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one God." Something is etched within us that longs for the acknowledgment of our parameters. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" as I trace the cross on my body I remember that I am Christ's own forever. Tomorrow, we repeat another ancient rite as we take on ashes, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return." I am mortal creature.

For forty days, we shall walk the desert in remembrance of Christ in the wilderness and His temptations. In a spiritual sense, we will re-enact the wanderings of the children of Israel in the desert and struggle with our own stubbornness even after our deliverance from slavery. We will grapple with our sacred cows and long for the dearly-loved leeks in our former lands.

I am glad for the saints who struggled as I struggle, who failed just as I fail, who doubted just as I doubt. In the daily reading of saints' lives, I can take comfort that the road has been taken before and that strength to persevere and overcome comes not only from the saints, but from Christ Himself who walked the dolorous way to Calvary and rose from the bowels of Death.