February 19, 2026
My gosh the train was loud this morning, so loud it hurt my ears. I watched two engines pulling tankers to the east. My phone dinged, so I checked it and Mr. Dog, who has been walking out kindly, thought it was cute to grab the leash and pull, grab my shoelaces and pull. Like Mrs. Horse, when my attention strays, the playful joker in him arrives. (Mrs. Horse would stop if my mind wandered while we were driving.)
The redwing blackbirds are back. Three were calling each other from assorted electric wires and trees.
It’s the day after Ash Wednesday. We are in the season of sin—we’re supposed to weep over how we failed God, how we don’t live up to what God had in mind, how we hurt others-what we have done and what we have left undone.
But it’s bigger than just my individual failings. Stephen Freeman quotes Saint. Sophrony of Essex in “Adam’s Sin and the Sin of All”:
So, each time we refuse to take on ourselves the blame for our common evil, for the actions of our neighbour, we are repeating the same sin and likewise shattering the unity of Man.1
Good grief, so I’m guilty for the ICE agents shooting the protesters in Minneapolis, and for anti-law-and-order instigation of those protests? The weight of this is too heavy and sounds too much like social justice, a narrative I don’t particularly trust because I don’t trust the behavior I’d observed from people who practice this. But I am part of this country’s community.
Though this morning the daily office took me to a passage in Ezekial that says:
The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.2
So there’s a tension between being part of the community of humans and being an individual with regards to what I have done and left undone.
Taking the blame for our common evil has shown up on a more personal level when the scars of being rejected ache. I came across a Facebook posting about a friend who long ago walked away and excluded me from her group. I’d sent a friend request years ago. It was still open. I canceled it, unfriended her husband. And said a few prayers for them, grateful to not be in her inner circle, because the cost would have been too high. Reading Psalm 88 reminded me:
You have caused my companions to shun me; You have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escaped; my eye grows dim through sorrow.3
This is that time of year when I invited several church people to lunch and they were too busy. Funny how the church year and the longer days can pull up memories. Despite knowing how this hurts, I too have walked away from people because my gut protested so loudly, no friendship could happen. I confess that I have sinned against you by what I have done and left undone.
In Journey to the Cross Paul David Tripp says outright. “It’s good to mourn. It’s healthy to be sad, and it’s appropriate to groan. Something is wrong with us, something is missing in our hearts and our understanding of life, if we are able to look around and look inside and not grieve”4. Well all right, but I deeply dislike it when writers lay their own experience on their readers as a mandate.
Right now, I don’t have the gift of tears, that weeping and gnashing of teeth, where God draws near and I know in those tears how I’ve failed, how I need to throw myself on God’s mercy. I fear my own awareness of sin would bore down so hard I can’t function. When tears do come, I have slid into the pit. I wept every day for many of my teenage years because I took original sin to heart. I claimed the name wretch.
The year we renovated our house and my workplace had a mass shooting, my tears flowed easily. It was tough on Bruce. I am just as connected to the young woman who knew the depth of her sin and the cost of the cross in her heart and in her tears as I am to the seventy year old me who has found a quiet and contentment, contentment that St. Paul says is great gain.
As the Lutheran confession says, “we confess that by nature we are sinful and unclean.” If I’m paying attention, I close my mouth. This feels like heresy when God made us in his own image. God’s image is not by nature sinful and unclean. (There is enough that works in our Missouri Synod church with thoughtful, Christ focused pastors, I can be careful not to say those words.)
In Adam’s Sin and the Sin of Others Stephen Freeman offers hope, a more positive way of looking at the repentance that makes sin into an idol because it has become our focus.
The season of Great Lent is a call to true repentance. It is not an entanglement in our private wrong-doings and failures – it is a movement towards the truth of our existence, the fullness of the “whole Adam” (as St. Silouan often called it). Our fragmentation and disintegration into our private worlds is a contradiction of God’s intention for human well-being.5
What a relief not to be tangled with those failures. I’ve been reminded lately of some long past transgressions—all I can do is confess them and lean on His mercy and pray that in God’s good economy he can redeem those times. Only God can draw me into the “fullness of the ‘whole Adam’” Contrary to what the live-your best-life folks say, it’s not up to me to decide what my best life is, or how to get there. I’m not wise enough.
In Modern Lent Freeman elaborates on this:
What is at stake in the modern world is our humanity. The notion that we are self-authenticating individuals is simply false. We obviously do not bring ourselves into existence – it is a gift. And the larger part of what constitutes our lives is simply a given – a gift. It is not always a gift that someone is happy with – we would like ourselves to be other than we are. But the myth of the modern world is that we, in fact, do create ourselves and our lives – our identities are imagined to be of our own making. We are only who we choose to be. It is a myth that is extremely well-suited for undergirding a culture built on consumption. Identity can be had at a price. The wealthy have a far greater range of identities available to them – the poor are largely stuck with being who they really are.6
Maybe an important spiritual discipline is learning to bless the Lord for who we are—flaws and strengths. Maybe we should bless the Lord for the life he has given us and trust that both the joy and suffering are molding us into the people he had in mind when he made us. And yes when we step out of God’s idea for how he made us, confess our failure and turn back to him.
February 20, 2026
This morning the wind is roaring so hard I don’t take the dogs down the road because I can’t hear when a car is coming. Even though I walk facing traffic, I need to know what’s behind me. I feed Mrs. Horse behind the barn so the hay doesn’t blow away in the forty mile an hour west wind.
When I bring her in for the night, she crow hops in front of the door. She’s been battered by wind all day and looked longingly between the fence rails when I walked the dogs. She’s lost hair during the warm spell. She must be chilled. The wind batters us. The Holy Spirit batters us. But our trees hold.
Fasting
During Ash Wednesday, our pastor preached a brilliant sermon on fasting, a spiritual practice I’ve been curious about. I’ve been nudged by God? to try this spiritual discipline, so it was a gift that Pastor C brought it up. Self-denial is good training for taking up our cross and even for martyrdom. Pastor made the point that our faith is physical and that fasting shows us in our bodies how we are dependent on God’s gifts and how our physical hunger can teach us about our spiritual hunger for Christ.
Pastor C talked about the sin of gluttony—of eating more than we need, of having too much stuff. He encouraged us to skip a meal or several. “Don’t tell me about it,” he said because Jesus said to shut up about fasting:
“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.7
My relationship with food is complicated from growing up in the era of Twiggy, where the ideal woman looked more like a boy than a woman. No way could adolescent me look rail thin like her, though I longed for those slender hips and flat stomach. I tried fasting in college, but wasn’t good at it, a relief because it might have been easy to slide into an eating disorder. Weight Watchers showed me how much I could eat. Eventually I’ve learned there are no bad foods. The point is to stop eating when you’re satisfied.
Right after church we went out to lunch, I ordered a Diet Coke, even though I have pretty much eased out of my addiction. Then ate a few candies from the feed store, and a few bites of cheesecake from our visit to the Cheesecake factory.
“Fret not” the psalmist says “because of evil doers. Be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart”8
Maybe my stubbornness—no I don’t want to—is itself a kind of evil doer with the promise they will fade like the grass. Even while it bubbled up, I can turn to the Lord, trust him and do good., even if that doing good is small like walking the dog or dusting the house or petting the cat. Perhaps if I delight in him and my desires will align with his desires for me.
I used to say, sure I’ll do whatever was being asked of me from the pulpit, but now I find a rod of iron along my breastbone saying, “No, not going to do it. Lord make me willing to be willing and help my unbelief.”
Once when I mentioned fasting as a spiritual discipline, a friend reminded me how she was conflicted about it because of our culture’s emphasis on dieting. Good point. As a woman who has tried to limit calories for diets, it would be easy to slip into an unhealthy relationship with food. I’ve been there. Knowing I could eat anything eventually freed me.
All I know that with the Diet Coke thing I turned it over to God and asked him for help and he gave it. I paid attention to how it tastes, how it stifles my sense of thirst, though there are times when Diet Coke is a good gift, when I’m not feeling good. As a free woman in Christ, I can drink it and give thanks but I don’t like how quickly it becomes an addiction.
When I opened Stephen Freeman’s essay, Modern Lent, I was encouraged by his practical advice on how to practice Lent. Do check out Freeman’s blog Glory to God for All Things. It often bolsters my walk with the Lord.
Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world.9
These days it’s so easy to view our modern world with all its conveniences, the noise that comes from our screens and the push to improve ourselves as progress, as a better world, than the past. Maybe the ancient church has ways of showing us how we can be in relationship with God.
Freeman suggests we stop trying to fix ourselves. When we fast we should use that extra time not preparing food and eating to pray, otherwise he says, “fasting without praying is the fast of demons.” 10
Lent is also a time to focus on being generous to others. Freeman reminds us that you cannot be too generous. Sometimes people don’t know how to receive gifts but that shouldn’t stop us. Receiving those gifts can be as much a dying to self as giving them. Lent is a time for attending those Wednesday evening Lenten services. And a time to ease back on screens—both the gossip that comes through social media and the outrage that often catches us while scrolling or watching the news. Freeman encourages us to:
Fast from watching/reading the news and having/expressing opinions. The news is not presented in order to keep you informed. It is often inaccurate and serves the primary purpose of political propaganda and consumer frenzy. Neither are good for the soul. Opinions can be deeply destructive to the soul’s health. Most opinions are not properly considered, necessary beliefs. They are passions that pass themselves off as thoughts or beliefs. The need to express them reveals their passionate nature. Though opinions are a necessary part of life – they easily come to dominate us. Reducing the need to express how we feel about everything that comes our way (as opposed to silently weighing and considering and patiently speaking what we know to be true) is an important part of ascesis and self-control.11
This. This. This affirms my commitment not to speak my peace about the news, even though somedays it’s hard not say, “What about?” It’s hard not to tangle with someone because, after all, it’s on me to save our culture. Not. Freeman is wise telling us to hold off. Several friends have asked for my political opinions so they can understand my perspective. This affirms my sense that no good can come of those conversations. There is so much more to our friendship than political opinions.
Several mornings the news has chattered in the background and I’ve lost my peace to outrage. My opinions won’t change anything, though I can pray for justice.
February 21, 2026
First thing I watched five squirrels play with their trees. They looked like cars on a roller coaster running along branches, leaping between them. They ran and jumped across the tree line from the black walnut all the way to the lilacs, then down to the ground, running one right after the other across our driveway. The Redwing blackbirds haven’t been shagged off by the hard wind and cold. The day is blessedly quiet except for their song.
References:
1 Stephen Freeman. Glory to God for All Things. Adam’s Sin and the Sin of All. Glory to God for All Things. https://glory2godforallthings.com/2026/02/17/adams-sin-and-the-sin-of-all/
2 Ezekiel 18:20 ESV
3 Psalm 88:8 – 9a
4 Paul David Tripp. Journey to the Cross. Wheaton, Crossway. 2021. p. 7
5 Stephen Freeman. Glory to God for All Things. Adam’s Sin and the Sin of All.
6 Stephen Freeman. Glory to God for All Things. Modern Lent. https://glory2godforallthings.com/2026/02/20/a-modern-lent-4/
7 Matt 6: 16 – 18, NIV
8 Psalm 37: 1-4, ESV.
9 Stephen Freeman. Modern Lent.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
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