OK, so I've been writing this blog for a few years, now, and I've never mentioned Brother Curtis, though I think of him almost every day.

So, confession time: he is a monk who said something I have never been able to forget, and it speaks to the sheer dailiness of Easter. The story:

The wonder of Easter pivots on some pretty powerful images:  an empty tomb, a stone rolled away. We can leave these images (and promises) embedded in the story, or we can let them loose in our lives.

Here's a quote I have carted around for years regarding Easter:

"To say that Jesus has risen from the dead means that he is not where we left him...

I read the cover story in the recent New York Times magazine last night, and while it was about golf, Tiger Woods, bubbles and the economy, I smelled Easter. And not just because it’s now deep in Holy Week.

Here’s a quote: "All economic bubbles begin with a fervent faith in the transformative potential of something. As the bubble inflates, demand grows and the optimism of the early evangelists becomes contagious, converting more believers and steamrollering scrutinizers and cynics. But at some point the momentum shifts. Economic reality quickly catches up with the pervasive overconfidence that first set the bubble aloft, and it bursts."

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, and we enter into the mysteries of Holy Week. I realize that some years the church calendar speaks powerfully to inner states in me; other years, less so (or I am not looking for the congruence that is probably always there).

One annual practice I have is to read a particular quote about Jerusalem. It is by a dear friend, an Episcopal priest, author, and retreat leader. He is writing about the city Jesus enters… knowing he is heading to his death. The quote is an unflinching invitation to look our own Jerusalems squarely in the face.

According to the weather, the day this blog appears will be one of those beautiful, palpable early spring days, when there is a sudden rush of warmth, light, sun, and promise. Lent is when these days happen, these early intimations of Easter’s life amidst the ongoing Lenten invitations to repentance and self-examination.

Putting together both aspects of the calendar—the recess-like glee of the weather, and the sometimes less than gleeful theological invitations of this time of year, you get—not a weird blend but an honoring of life’s complexity.

A quote that I recently read reminded me of this both/and. The writer, Anne Hillman, was led to make this comment after smelling the coming spring in the mud in the land where she lived.

A few nights ago, I deliberately walked by a building on East 74th Street that used to house a Starbucks, touched the outside of it, and said a prayer of remembrance and thanksgiving and wonder. In other words, it was a pilgrimage moment.

It was a moment triggered by the Marble contingent of 85 or so who were on their trip to the Holy Land. Because it’s March, thinking of them, and wishing them well brought back sudden and vivid memories of my (attempted) trip to the same place in March of 1994.

I was an active layperson at St. James’ Episcopal Church in the city, and because of where I was in my life then in terms of my faith and because of deep connections with other parishioners and clergy, the chance to go to Israel that spring with these people was utterly compelling. This was the time. I joined the group, cleared my calendar, packed my bag, and a few days before leaving, started to get sick. An ear doctor cleared me to go, but I felt pretty lousy. Still, a once-in-a-lifetime plan is a plan.

One of my favorite descriptions of Lent was from a pastor. She said, shrewdly, “Lent is about the mess.”

I think this statement covers it all: the messes we have made in our relationships, our lives… the messes within us—the feelings, hurts, resentments, stuck places. In asking us to look at our “mess” and to bring it before God, Lent asks us to embrace our full humanity, not to make us wrong, but make us seen—not hidden—in our own eyes and in God’s.

It can be quite an inventory! But the purpose of this honest examination is repentance, which literally means “to turn around.” To pivot. To make a new step.

In the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus feeding the 5,000, it talks about how after the little bits of fish and bread have somehow fed so many, even to the point where everyone assembled could “eat their fill,” Jesus instructs the disciples to “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.”

Fragments left over? That is abundance upon abundance; how could anything be left over? But the message is clear: that “nothing may be lost.”

And so it is with us: The Kingdom of God needs all of us, and all our parts, our fragments. These words shimmer with mystery and provocation and promise: that all the fragments count, are needed. That it is not up to us to decide which parts of ourselves to discard, or disown—God will use them all. That feeding—ourselves, others—is something that happens in very unpredictable ways.

I recently read a quote from a pivotal book that found me 18 years ago: “Simply Sane: The Spirituality of Mental Health” by Gerald May, psychiatrist and author of many classic books on spirituality, and one of the founders of the renowned Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in the D.C. area.

The reason I have the book to this day is because I “borrowed” it from the convent where I found it and it utterly steadied me during a tumultuous time. Yes, I purloined it. I was that desperate then, and the book is that good.

In any event, I recently legitimately bought a compilation of Jerry May’s posthumous columns from the Shalem newsletter.

Our Christian tradition has much to say about new life… new life in Christ, the resurrection life we celebrate in Easter; the coming of new life we wait for in Advent. As Isaiah reminds: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it?”

I get excited about these new life concepts. In actual practice, well, not so much. Like many folks, the new can cause anxiety in me. So for any of you facing the new in any of the startling ways it can come, here is something that really helped me.

It’s an observation by one of my favorite writers, James Hollis, in his brilliant book, “Swamplands of the Soul.” He talks about whenever we are faced with some invitation to new life, we have two possible responses—anxiety or depression. I remember reading this and thinking, “Hey…what about option #3? This is it??”