Spring.  Taking a walk this afternoon, this beginning of the fourth week of Lent, I marveled at the still naked forests, the still motionless lakes, the still somnolent land, and I thought:  the land is still fasting.  In in its own way, the land clings to the rythm of Lent, understanding that existence's ways dictate that privation is as important as abundance.

     Soon, very soon, the land will awaken.  But for now, it waits.  As do we.  Like the land fasting as it waits for spring, we find our richest insight not in running madly, but rather in submitting to the rhythms of the land, the land and landscape of our mortality, our mortality in the hands of God.
     Morality and privation make spring that much sweeter.