Shadows

I'm making a pilgrimage tonight, with some friends, to the Tenebrae service at a big-city church.

I had never heard of this service, or attended one, until a few years ago. But how appropriate it seems to be for Holy Wednesday, as the creeping darkness of Holy Week begins to descend on us.

You can read all about Tenebrae here. The church is candle-lit, and the candles are extinguished one by one as readings proceed.  At the end, the final shining candle is obscured from view, often placed beneath the altar.

The comes the strepitus -- a loud noise symbolizing the earthquake Scripture tells us followed the Crucifixion. If done properly, the strepitus makes you feel as if all hell is breaking loose -- as it is, I guess.

But that's not the last word. After the hellish noise, the single burning candle is placed upon the altar, the light of Christ for all the people to see, as they depart in silence.

Kvetching about spring

I'd like to report that the spring equinox arrived safely at my home this morning. Immediately, my plants began complaining. They do this every year. They are just not patient. They are the only two large potted plants I have left, and they are excessively worried about their health. They get six months on the porch every year, but the rest of the time all they do is kvetch.

I wanna go outside, the Norfolk Island pine complained as I finished my watering duties. It's spring. Look at me! I look like crap in this dry, forced-air heat. I'm becoming straggly. My needles are dropping.

The jade plant, sitting nearby, chimed in (the jade never misses an opportunity to complain). You? Look at me! I'm straining toward the light. I'm leaning all to one side. She never bothers to rotate me.

"You can't go out yet, ladies," I said cheerfully, misting the pine with warm water, and hoping it would shut up. "It's 38 degrees out there. You want to shrivel up and die?"

But it's spring! they chorused.

Yes, I hear them. I'm longing for a break in this cold, too. Normally we have some relief by this time -- a day or two when sitting in the sun becomes a possibility. This year, no. At least the sun is out. That's the big yellow thing in the sky, in case you've forgotten.

"I'm sorry, ladies," I said to the plants. "I'm thinking one more month in the house. Then you can go out in the fresh air. In the meantime, maybe I'll get some pansies for the porch. Hanging baskets."

Pansies! moaned the pine. Low-lifes. Hanging baskets, what an insult!

Cold and raw

Well, so much for the warm March we were anticipating. The weather has been rainy, cold, and raw, with stiff winds. My fur-hooded parka is longing for the closet -- or I am longing to send it there.

Still no jobs are on the horizon for J. or our son. Both had a flutter of activity early in their searches, but early hope and enthusiasm have petered out. Our home is crying out for painting, decluttering, new furniture, and rearrangement. But that's not happening. Not soon, anyway. There is disorder everywhere I glance.

We find ourselves in a rather gray place, without definition, and colorless. Easter is trundling toward us, but even I seem unable to anticipate it.

If it would warm up, just a little, I think we would all feel better!

No comment (for a change)!

One of my Lenten practices for this year has been to "sign off" Facebook until after Easter.

I sent a little farewell message to all my friends, wished them a Holy Lent, and moved my little Facebook icon to the last screen on my cell phone, where, theoretically, I will forget to look at it.  I unpinned Facebook from my taskbar. I am now Facebookless.

Don't get me wrong: I adore Facebook. I love the interaction with people I don't see often -- or ever -- (as well as with people I do). But, for me, it had become a terrible time-waster, and a distraction from other things that need doing. What's more, it kept my mind too busy all the time. I "had" to catch up with postings; I "had" to share lots of posts; and, worst of all, I "had" to have an opinion on everything I saw.

I got tired of having an opinion.  And, let's face it, my (predictably liberal) opinions are a surprise to no one, especially to me.

I got tired of the noise in my head. I felt debilitated by the noise in my head. Facebook is only one source of that noise. But noise is never a good thing!

I'm enjoying the Lenten quiet. It may wear on me in time. But, for right now, the silence in my head is golden.

Candlemas, and other suburban fantasies

Although I admit to being a bookworm, most of the books I had during my undergrad and graduate-school years eventually found their way into the public library's book sale (because am I ever going to read Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon again? Seriously, I could hardly read it the first time). One of the few books I've saved is called English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, by George C. Homans. I love this book, and I actually do refer to it, usually every time I find myself craving a simpler life in a more bucolic setting than the suburbs.

There's something reassuring in the recurring feasts, fasts, and labors of the medieval agricultural year, and it comforts me to read about mead-making (or whatever) whilst riding on the commuter train listening to a woman yelling at her truculent teenager on her cell phone.  Was it really simpler in the old days? I have no idea, but that's my fantasy - rising early to watch the sun rise, drinking coffee on the porch at first cock-crow. You get it.  That's why they call it fantasy -- it's not going to happen.

But I digress.  Tonight I looked up Candlemas, which is tomorrow, February 2nd, celebrates Jesus's presentation in the Temple in Jerusalem following Mary's postpartum purification, and is the occasion for the blessing of candles. Like most of our Christian holidays, this one was also probably stolen from the Pagans, as it pretty much coincides with Imholc, a Pagan festival midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  I must be a little Pagan deep down, because I really like these observances of the passing seasons of the agricultural year. After all, the word pagan derives from the Latin paganus, which means "country dweller." And it's really scary that I knew that without looking it up. Nerd warning!

In any event, Candlemas, according to my trusty book, also signaled the return to tilling the fields. Grazing cattle were driven off the field, and spring plowing would begin.  This must mean that spring came quite a bit earlier in olde England than it does in my neck of the woods.  There's nothing growing around here (that I can see) in February.

The great wheel of the year -- I love it. But that first cock-crow business? Too early for me, really. Let's be real.