40 Days Begin Here - A Certain Sort of Silence 40::1

Easter is on its way...40 days to go, but the pancakes have been eaten and a journey is about to begin. Hmm, Lent... I'm not a great fan of giving up chocolate (as if, ha ha!), so that won't be happening. I didn't grow up with any concept of Lent at all, but it's growing on me, year on year. Easter is such a very beautiful time of the year - in many ways. Nature goes crazy and everything starts budding and singing and hatching. Energy returns after the darkness of winter. I become creative and busy with a hundred ideas. The days grow long. Life gets drawn out of its' cocoon. But it goes so much deeper than that for me. In terms of my spirit, it is a call to walk again with Jesus. To enter into something of the mystery of his death and resurrection, letting it touch me more deeply. My life's experiences echo this season of the year - my mother died at Eastertime, my smallest son was born two years later, as the daffodils poked their way up out into the sunshine...

To me, the journey of Lent towards Easter, is a road of love and loss, life taken and new life given, pain and forgiveness, solitude and community, darkness and light, and especially hope...so rather than tritely giving up sticky buns or whatever, I am going try to focus on some of these themes with a picture or two each day during the next 40 days. I won't be writing too much, as I'm going inward, not outward, on my journey. I promise though, they won't all be pictures of flowers! But photos of a certain sort of silence...

Now, this looks like a non sequiter, and it isn't one of my 40 days pictures! It's not my usual kind of a make, but was from a pattern I found in a library book. She seemed to be required to be made and she'll be winging her way out of here soon. She has a special job to do, for another sweet brunette.