Shrove Sunday: This freshening wind blew sideways through the yard

From D.W.: I originally posted this back in October, but it felt fitting to re-post it now. It’s a story about Spring and renewal. Or, more accurately, the promise of renewal. That promise that holds us through the tightening grip of cold inhumanity and whispers in our ear that soon, very soon, change will come. Our fears and discomfort are real, but they won’t last forever. That Winter, inevitably, gives way to Spring.

I wanted to re-post this not just because it’s a good reminder of the time and world where we now live, but because I can’t think of a better way to kick off the next few weeks here at Re-Mixtapes. Starting today and ending after Easter will be a series of posts about Lent. (I’d call it “Lent Madness, but that’s… taken.)

Rachel wrote quite a lot about the Lenten season and some of the entries here are from over twenty years ago. Often these were official or professional writings as part of her time in parishes or at Forward Movement, but just as often they were meditations within her personal life. Admittedly, as someone who grew up in a religious tradition that didn’t observe Lent, I never fully understood or appreciated it within her lifetime. Now, though? Now I think I understand it a little better. The celebration. The struggle. The pursuit of some kind of answer. The promise of better things. The sacrifice. And, ultimately, maybe, the celebration of finding our way to the other side. I’m not there yet, but someday. Maybe someday.

So, I hope you’ll follow along with this journey and perhaps make it a part of your Lenten discipline this year. There will be fourteen total entries here over the next eight weeks, or so, ending after Easter. I will be publishing them to coincide with the specific day within the Lenten calendar for which they were originally written, so they will be somewhat sporadic.

I’m so grateful to everyone who has been reading the site, and especially for the kind words of encouragement you’ve sent me. This is a surprisingly difficult discipline to maintain, but I’m glad I get to do it. So, without anymore blathering from me, we begin our journey through lent.

Shrove Sunday

I remember the backyard of the DC house vividly. The lattice work on the left-hand side and the bench seat where I sat and read for a solid afternoon… the steps where I would sit in silence and solitude…the little patches of grass on either side of the sidewalk…the abrupt blacktop parking lot that took over from the yard, just ten feet away from the porch…the brave tiger lilies that bloomed and bloomed and bloomed and bloomed…that backyard seems close enough to touch. It seems strange to me that I should remember a place I only lived for a year with such detail. But on a no-name night in late February 2001, still a bare seven months before the world changed forever, I stood in that yard and felt spring months before it really started.

It was a long, cold winter, and learning to live in a community with total strangers, thousands of miles away from my family, with no money was a profoundly challenging experience. I felt myself growing smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter, colder and colder as I was swaddled by Washington, my work, my angst, and that strange emotion I now think of as “growing pains”. By the time February rolled around, I knew I had to go home: back to my mother, back to Texas, back home…nothing was worth going this crazy. I became utterly convinced that the rest of my life was going to be grey, cold, and stinky—just like my walk to work at the convent offices. I would sit in my office, which had been some old nun’s bedroom, and stare at the blinking light on top of the Washington Monument for hours, wishing I was anywhere but at that desk, in that convent, in that city.

We had a huge Mardi Gras party the Saturday before Ash Wednesday at the house, and invited everyone we knew from the neighborhood and our workplaces. There was still some snow on the ground, and it was cold enough that we didn’t even have to ice down the keg that we ordered and stored on the porch, for the party. The house was full. At some point, I remember Bruce Springsteen blasting through the speakers in the living room, and Sister Christian dancing like a dervish on top of a coffee table, while two twenty-something Lutheran volunteers looked on in mute amazement. The next day and late afternoon were sort of a blur of cleaning up and headache-y daze, and winter was back, in full force…and it was Lent…in a community house…full of nuns…

I stepped outside later that night (after the cleanup was done, and Monday morning had started to loom in my consciousness) to steel myself for the week ahead…for more winter…for Ash Wednesday. I remember sitting on the lowest step on the wide porch, and just sitting with my head between my knees, smelling the detergent on my sweatshirt and wishing that I could just wake up in a different place. And from nowhere, this freshening wind blew sideways through the yard, carrying the smell of green and growing things: of flowers that were still asleep, trees that were just beginning to wake up, lambs about to be born, and tombs that were about to be emptied. The breeze blew in and out in a matter of seconds, but I knew one thing for certain. Winter could not last forever. Spring was on her way, and nothing could stop that. Knowing that was true was enough to get me to summer. Thanks be to God.

Love,
Sally