Middle Eastern Cajun Mardi Gras Feast
Today starts Mardi Gras, three days of celebrating and feasting before the rigors of Lent, a traditional time of penance, prayer and fasting that starts this Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, and lasts through Easter. This six week time span of Lent incorporates the ending of winter and the beginning of spring. I am not sure how many persons practice penance in Lent may celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus at Easter, but many enjoy Mardi Gras and we all look forward to the new life of spring.
As winter dies, spring rises. It is a time to order seeds for DMZ and my garden. It is time to repent and renew. It is time to remember friends who have passed, like Nancy Graf and Jim Harney, and to renew present friendships and seek new ones. Lent is a time for penance, to detach ourselves from something good so we can enjoy it more. The end of winter is a tough time. We are tired of snow and cold. Here it is a time of hope as we see more of the sun and what is to come with spring.
The lesson of the Garden that I need to repeat and remember are that in dying there is new life, in sacrifice there is abundance, in being childlike we grow, in forgiveness we are saved, in solidarity with poor we are blessed and in the castings of a worm or the dung of a cow new life grows.
In this time of Winter dying and Spring rising, this time of Lent, it is a good time to quietly be present to the busy world, take a step back from it and get ready to spring into a new world of peace and life. What goes around, comes around. Mardi Gras returns.
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