A while back I mentioned I wanted to write a little something about the lovely necklace given to me by one of my Yaya sisters, Cinda Willigar, and now seems as good a time as any. It is a picture jasper stone on a sterling silver chain. Picture jasper is a form of brown jasper that has picked up “inclusions” of iron and other minerals, giving it the appearance of a landscape. It was highly valued by the ancients who believed it connected them to the energies of Mother Earth and contained secret stories from the past. Oh my! When I read that, I had to smile. What better gift for a feminist storyteller? 
When Cinda gave it to me, she said the brown and tan striations reminded her of a seascape, but the instant I saw it, I felt swept into the desert, the dunes and the barrenness.
The desert has a special place in my personal spirituality. I’ve never been to a desert, (although a trip to New Mexico is definitely at the top of my bucket list), but in my heart I think of it as a place of letting go everything but “the one needful thing”; of stripping away all pretense; of honest reflection; and of confrontation of the darkness within.
February 18th is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent wherein some Christian churches remember Christ’s sojourn in the desert for forty days before the beginning of his public ministry. In my Catholic days, I hated Lent. The fasts were strict (even for men like my father who worked in the mines), and the observances austere. We were made to remember our sinfulness, our mortality, and our part in the death of Jesus. We were expected to make some sort of sacrifice for the forty days, give something up. For smokers, it was often cigarettes. For kids, usually candy. It seemed endless, empty, and designed to instill guilt and fear in the faithful. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
So I am a bit surprised to find that this year I’m actually looking forward to Lent, and not just because the Presbyterian Church’s observance is far less rigorous. I think it has something to do with the necklace. Picture jasper was also prized and named by the ancients as “the rain bringer,” used in rituals during times of drought. When I took it out of the package, the silver chain poured into my hand, flowing out from the stone, like streams in the desert, another powerful biblical image of God’s presence, provision, and trustworthiness. I will go into the desert willingly this Lent, prepared, even anxious, to pare away those things that no longer serve. I will look at my darkness with openness, and if it cannot be removed (and I suspect it isn’t meant to be), then I will pray to carry it with grace in a way that will do no harm to me or others. And I will trust that even though it seems a barren land, my thirst will be met, streams will flow.
I intend to wear the jasper necklace every one of the forty days. Indeed, I think that’s one of the reasons it was given to me when it was. A sacramental. A reminder.
And an invitation.
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