March

I grew up in North Dakota, where the month of March is still tightly gripped in Winter. And yet it's not the same as January or February; the days are getting longer and there's a certain quality on the wind. It's almost like a kiss. A soft, gentle, kiss from Spring even as Winter continues to rule over the northern plains.

I took the kiss on the wind as a promise, that something was about to change, and I began to love March.

So all through high school, which others around me continued as in the midst of winter, I had a secret friendship with the wind and the air and the sun in March. I would read favorite authors and re-read favorite books. I would take long walks in the growing evenings. I liked celebrating the little holidays of the First Day of Spring and St. Patrick's Day. March became my favorite month.

In college, I began to celebrate Lent, and as Ash Wednesday almost always falls in February, and Easter almost always in April, March was almost always caught completely in Lent. And I was caught up in legalistically denying myself. I also missed the so-slow, ever-so-slow turning over of winter to spring. The change was quicker, somehow, in Chicago, and tulips were sometimes already peaking the beginnings of their green leaves through by the end of March.

Now I've moved to Mexico, where there is no early spring and where March is completely buried under Lenten rituals in this Catholic country.

So I find that for the last few years, I miss early Spring. I miss the awakening joy. I miss home.

The only way out is through

Lent is difficult for me. I have too much of the Protestant in my theological blood. I prefer the Resurrected Christ, without problems. Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed. For this reason, my cross is empty - there is no suffering, emaciated figure hanging there to bring me discomfort (or is it comfort in disguise?).

At Lenten services I know the priest won't dismiss us with a "Go in peace." We are meant to leave troubled by our sin and the great sacrifice it precipitated. I don't want to dwell on suffering. I don't like thinking of myself as a vile sinner, saved through the grace of God but still struggling.
And I don't know what to do with the God-man. Behold, the Creator, stooped in dust, bloody.

I feel like Prince Humperdinck, muttering out of the side of my mouth "skip to the end."

But the only way out is through.

Do I cheat the Resurrection of its power when I neglect what it defeats? If I don't understand death, how do I know true life? How do I know how to feast, unless I first experience the fast.

Ashes to Ashes

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

But the steadfast love of the Lord never fails.

Merciful God, you call us forth from the dust of the earth and name each of us as your beloved children. Now look upon us as we enter these Forty Days bearing the mark of ashes:
sign of our mortality,
reminder of our end.
Bless our journey through the desert of Lent to the font of rebirth.
May our fasting be a hunger for justice, our acts of charity, a making of peace; our prayer, the chant of humble and grateful hearts. When we come to Easter and behold the empty cross, renew in us the certainty of your unfailing love; assure us again that neither life nor death
can separate us from you.