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I have been resonating with a Bible story lately--and not one of the "nice" ones. It is the story in Judges 11:29-40 of Jephthah's Daughter.

Lent is a time when I used to respond to the call to give something up for 40 days. But as life got harder and loss piled upon loss, I began to resent being told that I had to give up something else for Lent.

YARD WORK - AS VIEWED FROM HEAVEN*
(overheard in a conversation between God and St. Francis):

"For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit."    --Psalm 16:10

The Communion of Saints Tapestry by John Nava

Last summer, the house I grew up in went on the market and I went to an open house. Things had changed, of course. Some of the changes were intentional, but mostly the house and lovely grounds were simply showing their age.  Small trees were large trees, the basketball court was like an archaeological discovery in a jungle overgrowth.  The apple orchard was gone.

It keeps coming and coming and coming. We've barely dug out from one storm and the next one hits, sending us back out with shovels, snowblowers, plows or just our own mitten-bedecked hands to try to make a way simply to get out of our homes.  

I mourn for the French in these days of fear and grief after the attacks on satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.  I share their outrage at being attacked and killed for acts of self-expression, and I agree that two of the rights that are foundational to a democracy are freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  I support those principles and am exercising that right even now, as I write this blog.  Attacks on liberty of any kind are always something that deserve a full-throated response if society and the individuals within it are to grow and thrive.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."
                                                              Ecclesiastes 3:1              

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
                                                                                                                  J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring.