Jesus with Jonathan

Blessings, Duffy. It is only 7:30 AM as I begin to write this, and my stomach is already grumbling! May it settle down quickly and may our fast be an easy one.  As a non-denominational follower of Jesus, I felt free to follow the Holy Spirit's prompting and use ethically sourced sage to smudge and mark my forehead with a cross this morning. As I did so, I recited the following prayers: "Great Spirit, I come before You with an open heart. May this sacred smoke wash over me, collecting my worries and cleansing my mind, body, and spirit. Clear any thoughts that do not serve Love. Help me walk in a sacred manner on Mother Earth." "I mark myself with this sign of the cross as a reminder of my frailty and my connection to the Earth. As the sage returns to the soil, so too will I. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and let this Lenten journey lead me from the shadows into Your Divine Light. Amen." Turning to our reading in the first two chapters of Matthew, and to N.T....

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me." Matthew 16:24 (NLT) Shalom, Duffy in Vermont, from Jonathan in New York,  a fellow fifty-something disciple of Jesus, and likewise humbled by God's daily graces.  As you kindly noticed, I was inspired last week to update my profile and roll out several new blogs. Hopefully this will make it easier for those who want to follow a particular aspect of my thought. Friday afternoon, I took a deep prostration dive with Google Gemini AI into the first Surah of the Quran, and I ended up getting some powerful recommendations about how to create a personal Horologion (Book of the Hours) for Lent 2026. I've been refining those insights in a continued dialogue with Gemini over the last few days. It is still a work in progress, but I map it all out for you here below.  There is no way I will be able to do all of this for just one day, let ...

Blessings. Today is Wednesday following Sexagesima Sunday, exactly one week before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, 18 February 2026. Today, the Church commemorates the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes on February 11, 1858. As a way to deepen into my Lenten retreat this year, I will aim to publish a new AI-generated image and some commentary on N.T. Wright's  Lent for Everyone: Matthew - A Daily Devotional  every day by noon Eastern (beginning on February 18). If you would like to follow along as part of your Lenten prayer commitment, comments here on the blog from fellow retreat participants will be most welcome. Especially from you, Duffy Gardner in Vermont! You are the spiritual co-leader of this retreat, if not the leader.  I have no intention of prescribing what any of you should do in terms of fasting during Lent this year. That is entirely up to you, God, your families, and maybe your Spiritual Director if you ar...