Today the neighborhood is full of holes.
This weekend, a group of volunteers will arrive with saplings and smiles and shovels and dozens of trees will be planted, but today? Today there are holes.
It’s no accident that the liturgical calendar and the seasonal changes align themselves so poignantly, and I found the holes comforting on our walk today. Here in the midst of this Lenten season, a season of depth and digging, of introspection and lack, of yearning and aching and emptying ourselves for resurrection, I can jive with holes. What is Lent if not space and permission to explore what lies underneath, to see what is unearthed when we take a trowel to our soft spots and our addictions and turn up our muddy bits to explore what happens when light touches them? Lent is the birthplace of holes, the carving out of hollows for the Holiest of Holies to enter.
This weekend, volunteers will come with saplings and smiles and a holy host of shovels and it will be like watching grace in fast forward. As though all the ends could be tied up in a Saturday, as though the reality of the slow love and hard work of spiritual hole digging and filling was just an inconvenient misunderstanding. Such is the beauty of resurrection, the kind we long for, the kind we aren’t likely to fully know here on this terra nullius of holes and hidden messes.
But on this unholy ground standing, here walking this soil unclaimed and earth embattled, I am Yours. I am fully won to You only, depths and darknesses all, Yours to fill and carry. Unearth my emptier places, be born in them, be resurrected daily, thusly, only, always. You make all things new.
Today there are holes, but tomorrow the trees are coming. Hold on.
love.
I am always excited when you write a new blog. So inspirational. Love you!