Saturday in Second Week of Lent

During the extended New England winters, hibernation beckons.  By curling up with Netflix, binging on a new series while avoiding the cold outside, we risk overlooking wonderful signs of renewal: budding trees and greening snowdrops.  By fasting, giving up sweets, embracing a "shopping diet," we make do with less while realizing just how much we usually indulge ourselves.  Lent, like a New England winter, offers us less a hardship, and more a liberation from too much of just about everything.

By embarcing both the quiet of a snowstorm and the lack of distractions, we can re-discover the overlooked, we can remember the forgotten, and we can replenish ourselves from the abundance hidden in plain sight; reawakening nature, a cleansed body and mindfulness o the gratitude, forgiveness and creativity which sustains us.  Forty days allow us to rest, to resist, to recover our inner resources and to restore our sense of self in the world, a world that not only deserves our attention but needs it, like Carmel, Bashan and Gilead suffering from the effects of conspicuous consumption: drought, desertification, and death.

May our inner rersolve be strengthened to reflect on the global ill effects of priviledge.