Perpetual Change

A time to repent

The Mardi Gras season ended on Tuesday with Ash Wednesday and Lent to follow, a time of repentence.

I have so many draft blogs, it is ridiculous, but I have been notoriously bad at keeping up, and not even as good at calling people as when I first got home from Asia. I will be better. The blogs from Asia and others are coming.

There has been quite a bit going on since I got back, but that is still no excuse.

I do want to say that I have enjoyed the cooler weather and been biking more. I love how in Florida, I can still see vultures, raccoons, armadillos and sandhill cranes just biking around town.

I finally had my Czech dinner (thanks to all who came) and I think it went pretty well. I am going ahead with the Origami art installation, and I will post where it will be shown first. Hopefully soon.

I also have been working on Grad School applications, and got my first acceptance and assistantship offer the other day. I am pretty excited, and pretty sure that fall will find me back in school. Both aspects of this last statement are surprising to me.

I will be returning to Europe for the summer season with Backroads, and I am very excited about that (mostly because it looks like I will be headed to Italy first in May!)

And I saw my sister off to her 6 month adventure in Europe. She may need some rescuing, so if anyone is up for an adventure. Let me know.

So, it has been busy, but now we come to Lent a solemn time for me every year, but even more so this year, as there has been a lot of loss lately, and I will not be seeing my boys this year, as I usually do at this time. I want to leave you with one thought though. I had this idea last year, but I don't think I ever got to write about it (actually, I think it is buried in my notes somewhere). I do think the fasting and abstinence of Lent had a very real purpose. I think it is good for our self-will, pride, and self-understanding to abstain and fast once in a while. This is why I value the tradition, but in Ukraine, this time of late winter and spring is the leanest and coldest. The animals are often pregnant, but look tastier everyday, especially when you struggle to find food to feed them - food that could be feeding you. Your canned goods and laid up potato storage have been exhausted. I think the traditions of Lent were developed by a wise bishop to encourage delay of gratification. You could eat that pig now, but it will do you much more good if you can hang in just six weeks. The grass will grow, the pig will birth, the cow will give more milk and you will not have squandered a bounty that is a short but hungry time away. Lent gives a spiritual strength to a time that would has always been very difficult for subsistence farmers.

posted by jjs @ 2:25 PM