The First Sunday in Lent

The sun favored us all day, rising in a golden mist, warming and drying the marshy earth. Jinx and I were out early, enjoying the welcome light. After our walk, I returned to the house. Jinx followed his own inner urgings and stayed out all day, napping in the sunshine beneath the Japanese maple out front.

A washing machine on the fritz, a large limb broken somehow from the weeping willow, a new security light to install, a writing project to complete — the sun moved across the sky with extra speed today, or so it seemed. And now it dips towards the western ridge, and it’s not too long until Compline, and Monday will be riding up behind us.

The seasons spin out in their way, and the hours of prayer in theirs. The soft winds, the whispered holy words, the sun’s fire, the candle’s flame, the clean and open pastures, lanes, and fields, the smooth and pristine pages of the breviary, the Scriptures, the missal. Arcing below the heavens, kneeling before the icons, ebb and flow, wax and wane, morning and evening, infant and grayhair, incense and ashes.

This was the first Sunday in Lent, AD 2021. And the portents hang heavy in the clear, mercifully clear sky.

~ S. K. Orr