SPRING TRAINING

Dear All Of Us,

Well, here comes Lent.
Hope this doesn't earn me 
The Odd Duck Of The Year Award,
but I like Lent.
Really do!
I see it as our annual
Spiritual Spring Training - 
a chance to shape up, 
sharpen up, tone up.
It gets us back to basics, 
to essentials -
gets them dusted off,
front and center,
freely and fully functioning in us.

Our model for this 
Spiritual Spring Training 
is Jesus.
He didn't go to Florida.
He went to the desert
and got quite a work out there.
He resisted temptations to a 
             False Self,
and affirmed the truths of his
             True Self.
      That's what we need 
           to do as well.
     For Jesus and for us, 
      those temptations 
                and 
          affirmations
        center around
            pleasure
            power
            possessions
     ( see Mathew 4:1-11 )
All three register true or false 
across the zones of our living:
    physical         intellectual
    emotional      relational
    social            self
    the other       matter 
    material        soul            
    spirit             psyche.
  and ever so much more.
We play out our living 
across a field, in an arena,
indeed, in an era of 
Reality TV and 
way too much such slush
that is anything but real.
That kind of soul sickness
has spread into society, 
business, government, 
across and is embedded
in our culture.
It seeps into soul,
and there festers 
into the unrealness of a 
        False Self.
The practice of Lent
helps us see that
and affirm the truth
of who we really are, 
             our
         True Self.

Our Spiritual Spring Training
sees us work out 
through the exercises of
prayer, fasting, alms giving, 
time apart and meditation.

We see what we fall for 
and what we can rise to.

We work to recondition self
for excellence and truth.
That means seeing 
how/where we are with
          pleasure
          power
          possessions
in all their forms
and across the zones 
of our living noted above -
         real or false.


         
Jesus was tempted 
to trash 
who he is.
We are too.
Jesus exercised 
a stretch to real.
May we as well 
stretch to real
through the discipline 
of Lent, of our
Spiritual Spring Training.


Happy we could share
this work out together.
See you next week.
In God's Dear Love,
     John Frank

         *****


Again and again,
thanks so much for
letting others know of
  "frankly speaking"
through word of mouth
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  "frankly speaking."
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           Thank You!


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