Today is the beginning of "Lent" - a word which originates from an old English word meaning "spring." (This I discovered reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book,
Speaking of Sin.)
March isn't spring yet in out part of Canada. But as a gardener, I can identify when she writes that Lent refers "
not only to what is happening in the natural world but also in the spiritual world" during the "six weeks preceding Easter, the great Christian festival of new life, when the hard, buried bulbs of our souls come into full flower."
"
As any good gardener knows, new life requires some assistance. The life itself is entirely God's gift, but the cultivation of it calls for work. There is some tilling and fertilizing to be done, some weeding and pruning of dead branches. Without such intentional participation in the renewal of life, the roses will eventually disappear under the poke-weed, and the Japanese beetles will eat all of the peaches..."
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