The Season of Rebirth

March may well be one of the dreariest months inNortheastern Ohio, as we bid goodbye to winter and turn our faces towards the onset of spring, but it is this profound seasonal change that can inspire our spiritual life more than any other time of year.

For Christians, the Lenten season invites us to a variety of experiences and rituals around the last days of the life of Jesus Christ and his passion, death and resurrection. Many of our Lenten practices traditionally are practices of self-denial. What will we be giving up during this season?

But the advent of Spring invites us to look at these practices from a different perspective.  We can see this time as a period of rebirth within our own hearts, and create rituals as part of our spiritual practice that help focus our prayer life on a reawakening that mirrors the advent of spring.

What seeds have we buried deep in our heart that we would like to see push up through the soil this year and come to full flower?

In what ways have we closed ourselves off to others in our lives and how can we reopen our hearts to those around us?

What parts of our own human expression in the world have we repressed —afraid of being judged or ridiculed — that we would like to release into the world?

How have our inclinations to help others been stymied in the past by lack of money or time, and how can we carve out time for outreach?

This time of year calls us to deeper reflection and offers us a chance to pace ourselves with the season of new birth, new beginnings and resurrection by giving ourselves permission to let the truth of our being emerge into the sunlight of a new season of growth.

Syndie Eardly