Our nation is at a tipping point. Racism, alas, is not new. It has at times been driven underground so that we who benefit from the privilege of our race didn't have to look at it. But it has been there, strategically ignored by too many in power. Ask any person of color of any economic background in any part of the country.

The world is on edge right now. Troops muster, missiles fly; hate and violence cast a pall of fear at home and abroad. We feel a sense of unity with those who share our views on world events but more divided than ever from those who don't. New alliances are made but often at the high cost of once-cherished relationships that now lie in the dust.

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

Grandma Robertson was best known for her compassion toward wasps. She fed them. Sugar water. On her finger. She accepted their stings as merely ignorance on their part, and even when she fell into a nest of them and was stung all over her body, she maintained their goodness and innocence. The only thing Grandma loved more than wasps were her flower gardens, which she tended from dawn until after dark.

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.