Lent Practices: Confidence and Letting Go - Mothering Sunday reprise

  Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.  After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.  Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

    “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”^[ But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

  Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

 - Luke 2  New International Version (NIV)

So, the pic above is my reflective take today on the Mothering Sunday talk I wrote about last week.  The snap here was taken in a hurry and rather fuzzy: Basically, I decided to juxtapose Cecil Day-Lewis's Walking Away (pasted  into the heart), against the account of the boy Jesus in the temple.  Simplicity is all. The seed case and dandelion were a last-minute addition, gathered as I walked up to church. Not easy to find at short notice these last two; church is in a 'nice,' area and people keep their gardens and verges neat, tidy and relatively weed-free. (to the detriment of my spontaneous bursts of self-expression!)

I've been pondering a bit as to whether I'm bringing some of my own 'stuff,' into what's turning out to be a kind of  visual meditation and the appropriateness of so doing. Last week's - which I forgot to photograph -  certainly did. Then looking at it another way; who's to know what  each viewer (most people are too busy drinking their coffee to notice it in any case!) sees in it? That it's rooted in prayer, authentic and from the heart is surely A Good Thing, regardless of outcome... Hmm? That sounds suspiciously like another example of  'letting go,' and, oh dear, I really am not managing very well on that front, am I ?!