T.S. Eliot Had it Right

Oh man. Blogging is like exercise. Take a break from it and time gets away from you! I didn't mean to take so much time off. Life just catches up and gets in the way sometimes.

So how is everyone doing? Wanna give a big shout out to all my fans - all two of you - you know who you are.

Here we are. Springtime, which really, if you think about it, is sort of a wretched season. I mean first all the snow melts which is great in a way. But what are you left with? Looking at the brown grass, leafless trees, accumulated litter and dog droppings, and piles of leaves that I never quite got around to raking up last autumn.

Then there's the weather. Oh sure, it gets beautiful and sunny, but it's been staying about 10 degrees too cool to be truly comfortable. Or if it's warm it's probably raining. If it happens to be warm and sunny it's probably too muddy to do anything outside, anyway, or else it snows the next day. April is the cruelest month because it's really all about being teased.

I love the liturgical calendar like I love the seasons, and to me they are well suited to each other. (Whoa! Whiplash! Where did that come from?) Time for a little theology. As you probably know I'm Episco-tarian. The drama queen in me loves all the fancy high church stuff, but I'm really open to the many paths, one journey idea. It was just that at some point I had to be honest and admit that Christianity is my heritage, it's the language I know, so it's the one I use to express my spirituality and I can accept that we are all different. Are we clear on that point? Good.

Lent and Easter are alot like spring. Ash Wednesday is not a lovely day. We are reminded of our mortality, and that we are but dust. We are invited to contemplate our own inner accumulated trash and unraked leaves. It's not pretty. And it's followed by 40 more days of the same.

But just as Lent gives rise to Easter, April melts into May. Easter is like the days in spring when the ground is dry and the lilacs are in bloom. We celebrate life both new and eternal. We bask in the glow of joy like we do in the sun.

As usual, I'm puzzled by how the church calendar can possibly translate to the southern hemisphere. I think it no accident that the major church holidays coincide so well with ancient occurences like the solstice and equinox. It makes perfect sense that Christmas is the arrival of the light in the darkness and Easter is life returning. But that's a very northern hemisphere, temperate climate point of view. How does this work when the seasons are reversed? Do you suppose missionaries considered this?

Happy Easter. Happy Spring. I don't think I have the tolerance for chocolate that I used to.