Returning

February 22, 2021

Metanoia is a Greek word we Christians hear much about, especially during the Lenten Season when our focus is intentionally on the journey which Christ took and on how faithfully we are following.  The word itself basically means a change of direction, turning around, or turning back towards, and so we look for places in our lives where we need to make spiritual U-turns and head back toward the Light.  This liminal time between winter and spring suggests such a turn as we watch Nature begin to wake up.

One of my favorite perennials is the Lenten Rose because it embodies strength, resilience, beauty, and because it knows the real struggle of returning year after year.  The Lenten Rose spoke to me last year as we entered our first Lenten season at the beginning of what we assumed would be a short-lived pandemic.  Today in the United States, we approach the half-million dead count to this virus, so it wasn’t so short-lived after all.  Yet as I watched this plant push itself through frozen stubble and bloom despite its weathered, frost-bitten leaves, I couldn’t help but think of the hope of resurrection, of rising from ashes, which for most of us happens more than once in our own lives.  We are somehow banished from what or who we love or from a dream we cherished or from a familiar way of life and there is no going back to that one, particular time.  Still, we are empowered by the Spirit to make a return somehow, just as those multitudes of families and friends must do who lost loved ones to Covid, or to other circumstances.  We are empowered to say “yes” to life.  We, too, are invited by the Light to scrabble and scratch through the debris of whatever haunts us in order to rise and bloom, as many times as it takes, because we do not take that journey alone. Love goes with us.

This year, my Lenten Roses got caught in 10 degree weather just as they were beginning to bloom.  I feared the freeze would kill them, but it did not.  They are a bit stunted (as I believe we all are as this plague drags on), yet they still offer their beauty.  Their message of hope speaks deeply to me while we step into the second year of pandemic, and I rely, again and again, on their example of beauty and new life.

Perhaps that is what this specific time is about:  returning, like the rose, to our deepest, truest selves, despite the rubble (or even in appreciation of it), knowing that while the rubble can teach us, it cannot contain us.  When we return to our deepest selves, we find our Creator, the One who formed us out of nothing but desire, the One who knit us together and called us wonderful, and we begin to bloom once more. Blessings to you. ~Rosemary

Banished
Lenten Roses are a perennial plant. A member of the buttercup family, they bloom near Lent and require little care.

Think of it as hibernation
or incubation
or even dormancy
but call it what it is—
banishment—
driven beneath the soil
to disappear
to be no more. At least for now.
There is no choice
when a fiery revolving sword
and resolute cherubim
bar your return.
In the dark, you dream, you weep
for all
that has been lost—
your splendor gone
your essence buried
your precious names forgotten:
Christmas Rose, Elegance Pearl,
Ivory Prince, that made you
you
while above, wrens skitter
in brittle-brown leaves.

But I want to know
what the turning was like—
the desire to push back
the resolve to reach up
the Self-love that broke
through time-worn debris
to proclaim
“Here I am”
and show buds like roses
that unfold in the purple hues
of Lent.

© Rosemary McMahan