Break out “Pomp and Circumstance”

Tonight, our house proudly holds a recent college graduate. Though he opted not to walk in the graduation ceremony tomorrow afternoon, my parents and I are compensating by throwing a big graduation bash for Mitch, complete with burgers grilled on the back patio and a giant homemade cake.

Sandwiched in there between Good Friday and Easter is a feast to celebrate this freedom, the one that allows Mitch evenings free from deadlines and projects, that gives him the time to pursue (for once) things outside his area of study. He can take up hobbies! He can read books, just for fun! He no longer has to ration out the few spare minutes between study sessions.

Right now, though, he’s putting his college education to work setting up our brand-new bed frame. It’s proving more difficult than he anticipated.

Holy Week

Because Easter is early this year, and because Mitch’s graduation is earlier than we’d originally anticipated, Mitch’s last week of finals ever has managed to coincide neatly with Holy Week. Naturally, one event is struggling mightily to overcome the other, but I’m grateful for the tension between the two (though I don’t think I can honestly say the same for Mitch) because the holiday services provide a beautiful counterpoint to the stress of studies and finals and, in my case, plans for a fantastic graduation bash.

Of course, as we bustle from Mitch’s final presentation to a celebratory lunch with my parents to the Maundy Thursday service and from Palm Sunday service to family birthdays to yoga classes, it becomes crucial to quiet ourselves and let God remind us of what it is we walk through this week with our Savior, from Palm Sunday to Good Friday to Easter.

The flip side of this is that when the weekend comes at last we are allowed to celebrate two kinds of freedom, the one mysterious, vast and undeserved, the other tangible and immediate. One affects us now, in the present, while the other has affected us from our first breath and will affect us forever, working on our souls continually in ways we are scarcely aware of and in ways we feel all too acutely. The Resurrection is everything to us, and so we celebrate.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Progress

In which she develops a fondness for red meat

It seems, my friends, that we’ve now entered the stage of pregnancy in which cravings appear. There was an episode in my first trimester involving Dairy Queen soft serve, and I have, over the last four months or so, developed an exaggerated fondness for yogurt, string cheese and cranberry juice, but beyond that the cravings have been pretty tame and more or less within my usual diet.

If you’re imagining me ordering Mitch to the grocery store at midnight on a mission for the proverbial pickles and ice cream, though, that’s not quite right. When I crave something, it’s not so much a specific item as it is a second or third helping of whatever it is I’m presently eating and enjoying: if one glass of grapefruit juice is good, then three glasses is better. Better still is the consumption of an entire carton of grapefruit juice over the course of two days. (As it happens, I’m drinking my fourth glass of grapefruit juice right now.)

A startling exception to this would be my craving for meat, conveniently making an appearance while we were at the steak house after Mitch’s grandma’s wedding.

I’ve never been one for steak, or for pork chops, chicken breasts, meat patties, etc. Meat in large, uninterrupted quantities has never appealed to me much, but somehow I ended up ordering a ten-ounce slab of prime rib (I had to ask Mitch’s grandma for help because I really didn’t know how one went about ordering a steak) with a baked potato on the side, and I ate the entire thing.

It was delicious. Mitch, who has never seen me eat something so large or recently alive in one sitting, was suitably impressed.

Please answer “I will”

Yesterday we were privileged enough to be guests at a very small wedding. Set in a small church in Bow, the wedding was unfussy, unencumbered by the standard trappings of center pieces and floral arrangements, and closed with a good steak dinner in a local restaurant. The event managed the blissful balance between simplicity and sincerity, and both Mitch and I enjoyed it immensely.

The bride and groom? Mitch’s seventy-three-year-old grandmother, who looked gorgeous in a royal blue dress and low heels, and her beau, who wore a suit and boutineer of yellow roses.

Nobody walked down the aisle, nobody sang love songs or hymns. The minister read through 1 Corinthians 13 and made the usual small talk, but when it was time to exchange vows and rings, oh my – the moment was beautiful. Love like that at any age is something to behold, and though there were only a handful of us there to witness it (all of us family, including the groom’s ninety-four-year-old mother), I was struck by the solid beauty of any marriage begun with Christ at the center.

Ash Wednesday (belated)

Last year, I’d hoped to do a post on Lent, but by the time I got my act together we were well past Easter and into spring.

This year, I’d hoped to do a post on Ash Wednesday, but already we’re well into Lent.

Ash Wednesday has come and gone and Easter is right around the bend, but still, I’m within the season aren’t I? Belated or not, here is your Ash Wednesday post:

Once, on an Ash Wednesday a few years ago, my friend Anne and I walked past a Catholic church on our way downtown for breakfast. I pass this particular church every day, often just as the bells toll, and every day I admire the architecture, bells and sweet garden tucked along one side of the building. Occasionally, the fronts steps are crowded by wedding parties, or the doors are left open mid-mass and the voices of the worshipers make their way outside to the sidewalk, to me. On six mornings of the week the doors are closed, the courtyard quiet, the only activity around the church that of either chirping birds or the sway of the black branches of the leafless cherry trees out front.

This day, however, was Ash Wednesday, and as we walked by the open doors parishioners made their way outside after what must have been a morning mass. Every forehead bore a black smudge, which sent Anne and me off talking about Lent and Easter, contrasting our more “contemporary” Christian attitude toward the season (which is so prone to view Easter Sunday as a “high-attendance, seeker-friendly” day, right up there with Christmas Eve) with what we took to be the very high church, traditional celebrations of days like Ash Wednesday.

I did not think that, within a few years, I would not only celebrate Ash Wednesday, but would look forward to it as one of the richest of holidays, marking as it does the season of Lent and Holy Week and (at last!) Easter morning.

Coming into the dim, candlelit quiet of our church on the evening of Ash Wednesday feels to me both unbearably heavy and sweet, as it is the beginning of a psalm that ends with the resounding “Alleluia!” of Easter. More and more I value those weeks of fasting in between as a time of preparation similar to that of Advent, but weightier, deeper, because striking the tension between the awareness of my own need for redemption and the glory of what God has done through the death of his son is a great and constant challenge. The difficulty is clarified through the practice of fasting, when it is so tempting to turn inward to focus on my sin and my sacrifice, rather than being reminded, with each test of faith, of what it is Christ has done for us.

On Ash Wednesday, I confess my sins and take the ashes of last year’s palm fronds upon my foreheads, I who cry “Hosanna!” with one breath and “Crucify him!” the next. I bear them as a black cross, a reminder of my mortality as well as my penitence. I then enter a season of fasting, giving up something joyful in order to feel the weight more fully of my sin and of my Savior’s death, before finding myself at the cross on Good Friday and the tomb – that glorious, empty tomb – on Easter morning.

The cry of “He is risen!” can be met only with “He is risen, indeed!”

To give my cats a little credit

…I should probably add that they’re not completely oblivious.

After all, if Mitch and I are in different rooms, Gunner seems to make a point of stopping by whatever room I’m in periodically, as if to check in. He moseys on up to me, bumps my knee with a wet nose and meows, before sauntering back from whence he came.

When we first moved into our new apartment and going to the bathroom involved a trip down the long, dark hall, he actually got up with me, three times a night, and escorted me down the hall to the new bathroom. Sweet.

And for the first few months of my pregnancy, Sparrow thought my belly was the best thing since the heating vent, and any time I lay down for a nap (every three hours or so), I’d wake up with a furry, purring blanket draped over my midsection from rib to rib. As my belly got bigger – thereby diminishing prime lap space – she began to lose interest, and now that I roll over every forty-five minutes or so at night – thereby displacing any cats who might be in my immediate vicinity – my popularity has dropped somewhat drastically.

But still: three kicks to the face? That’s not exactly subtle.