wednesday in the third week of lent

not everything is frozen this morning, and the sunrise blankets all with at least a promise of heat. but my fingers are among the frozen things. my tongue may be the pen of a ready writer, but my fingers say, "not yet. let us embrace a warm cup of coffee, hold it. don't waste it on the ever-warm tongue."

still, lent means spring. the days are lengthening, and although it is brother crow, one of the black-robed monks, who awakes the dawn, and not myself, there is this morning enough light at 6:30 to read the morning psalms without a candle. This morning's psalms are numbers 120-125, songs of ascent, songs pilgrims sang as they went up to jerusalem, and I wonder what tune carried these words as jesus and his followers made the trip to mount zion for that last passover, the feast at which he himself would be the pascal lamb, sacrificed for his followers who would accompany him in the upper room, and for many, indeed for the sin of the world. at best i suspect a bitter-sweet melody, as they all at least silently agreed with thomas that they were going to jerusalem to die with their good master.

did they, could they, rejoice when he said to them, "let us go to the house of the lord?" perhaps the chill my fingers hold this cold lenten morning filled their whole beings, bowels and knees and tongues. still, they went, went to "jerusalem restored! the city/one united whole!/here the tribes go up,/the tribes of the holy one." they followed this son of david who would like his ancestor dance naked through the streets, not carrying the ark that held arron's blossoming rod into the city, but carrying the tree of life out. his followers then would not seem to be good candidates for living stones, "unshakeable, standing for ever."

yet when the cold darkness of today's lentnen night comes, i will pray the next psalm in this series, one that must have had joyous melodies for jesus' followers as they would begin to understand what he was doing as he recaptured jerusalem:



"when the holy one brought zion's captives home,
at first it seemed like a dream
then our mouths filled with laughter,
and our lips with song.
. . .
those who went sowing in tears,
now sing as they reap.
they went away, went away weeping,
carrying the seed;
they come back, come back singing,
carrying their sheaves."