It’s day 4, if you are counting Ash Wednesday, which I did. All day the wind has been blowing mightily, stirring up the detritus on the streets, from winter’s strange weather. There’s not much sand on the streets this year, since we’ve not had any snow, but what’s there is blowing around. Today, with this cold blast, the weather feels the way early Lent weather usually feels: wintery with a sense of spring coming. Most of the day I would have preferred to be cosy in bed with a book, or at least curled up somewhere with a warm blanket, if not actually napping. It’s not even that cold outside, but the wild air is brisk and bracing. The ocean churned at the end of our road, heaving into the cove, and spray flew beyond the breakwater as waves hit the granite rocks. Outside, the pounding sea is very loud, and the wind howls around the house. Together, water and air, they make a kind of an incessant rhythmic roar.
In my researches for Lent this year, I came across a thoughtful column by Professor Melinda Quivik. You can read it here. The author calls our attention to baptism for the season of Lent, reminding the reader that baptism is a joining of death and life. Three times we’re dipped in water, and three times we rise: the action itself teaches the three days marking Christ’s death and resurrection, the pattern we now live by.
May the waters of bapstiem flow over, in and through you, as each day, you die and rise again.
Peace, PA