He is Risen, Alleluia!

It is amazing how readily we get into new habits, or out of old ones. I could have made an entry bright and early on Easter morn, but I had become nearly used to not blogging and so, I did not rush to it. I even considered that I would not continue at all.

But, here I am again!

I don't know if I'd call it a "good" Lent in terms of any spiritual growth. I "gave up" other things besides this blog. The grape, that is, vino, and spirits. Meat. And eating my favorite desserts. I was not perfect in my resolve on those very few occasions when I was somewhere where the menu had, for example, chicken or where a bottle of wine was especially purchased by another to celebrate. I chose, as one friend said, "charity over abstinence". I will admit that it wasn't hard to make that choice. But mostly, I stuck to my promise of restriction. It is not the giving up of something that is the object; it is a tool toward reflection on the sacrifice of the Lord and preparation for His (and ours in the fullness of time) Resurrection. The small giving up on our part should open the door to some giving to others, to cooperative action in the work of God. Did I achieve it? I don't know. I do know that the several services I attended and the words I heard and the Eucharist I received made me hope for my metanoia, for a true emptying of self. A beginning. Now if I only could restrict the anger that causes me to cuss with a reflexiveness that surprises me, as if I were not the person engaging in the offending (albeit often in the privacy of my car or room) act.

In other ways, the season was both dramatic and affecting. A woman I had come to know in my faith community was the victim of matricide. Her death and burial during this time of reflection on the ultimate death and burial of God made Man was a sad, yet profound experience. I had been reading a great deal about and of Flannery O'Connor and it somehow seemed like one of her stories, this stabbing death of a religious woman who tried to shield her children from evil only to have it come directly into her home in the guise of her schizophrenic youngest, likely in the throes of a psychotic break. O'Connor wrote about such grotesque denouements to highlight the potential of Grace amid how did she put it, "territory largely held by the devil." The day of her funeral was the anniversary of my father's death, a chilly, blue sky, puff cloud sunny day. We stood on a hill in the cemetery, at the later interment, each of us given a white rose from the painfully beautiful mahogany coffin that would soon be under ground, wind blowing amid prayer and profession of belief of what is promised beyond what we see through a glass darkly, the Church on earth and the Church in Heaven. I took that rose to the mausoleum where my father is interred and said a few words of remembrance there. I felt hopeful. And even happy.

And happier still as Good Friday gave way to Easter joy in remembrance that He is Risen.