Spring is a season of cleansing, renewal, and newness for the created world; and the season of Lent, which at least in part mirrors spring, is an opportunity for cleansing and renewal for God’s people and the whole human family. One of the appointed Scripture readings on Ash Wednesday each year is a portion of Psalm 51, which reads in part (v. 10):
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
We begin the season of Lent, and look toward the coming of spring, with the hope and promise of renewal.
In his poem, “A Purification,” Wendell Berry, our former national poet laureate and so-called farmer poet writes:
At start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful tress, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.
Among many things, the poet speaks about renewal; about being renewed.
You likely know very well the common Lenten refrain that is highlighted specifically on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” To that we add, “remember that you are loved, and to Love you shall return.
The season of Lent provides another occasion to slow down, to pay attention to the world—the world around us, between us, and within us—and to be renewed, to be surprised, even astonished at our capacity to love and serve in Jesus’ name.
Rev. Dr. Nate Frambach
Professor of Pastoral Theology
Wartburg Theological Seminary
