Rowing toward God …

… John Donne in Lent | Web Exclusives | Daily Writings From Our Top Writers | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

We prefer a Lent with all lilies and no ashes. But Donne knew that the difficult disciplines of prayer, fasting, self-denial, and cross-bearing, together with the holy discontent of waiting for an answer that does not come—such rigors are necessary medicines for what he called the “insatiable whirlpool of the covetous mind.”