ash wednesday reflections

from girl meets god by lauren winner:

"i cried, i think, because i was coming to understand in a new way just how much was required of me, how much God was going to strip away all my everything, like silver polish taking the tarnish off old forks. i cried because i know more and more how chekov was right, how we are all running around desperate to make connections with one another, but mostly we are all just estranged. because i know more and more that this glass here is so very dark, that this really is a long loneliness, that it is both lonely and long.

sometimes i feel God has taken a paring knife to me. i know the way an apple feels."