Lenten Lights Q – Desire
We are well into the season when all things are made new here North of the Equator. The approaching Easter gathers up its own celebration of life renewed in resurrection. The earth cooperates in abundant celebrations of bloom and bravado. It is the time when desire is ripe everywhere. This week we walked down Bourbon Street in New Orleans where desire in all it’s many forms from lavish to lewd is on display.
Today is one of a handful of days in the church calendar that explicitly celebrates desire in the form of fertility, conception and the birthing process: the Annunciation of the Lord. My family was on spring break on Annunciation Day last year, too. Spring was much further along by March 25 of 2013. This year Spring seems slow, even delayed, as we travel through the Southern U.S. The green is barely on the branches and the flowers are still tightly in their buds.
Desire cannot be contained or determined by the season, by the calendar, by the flashing signs on Bourbon Street. Like spring that is slow in arriving, or the interruption of a solemn season like Lent, desire lights up the street and awakens the new … in it’s own good time. One of God’s holiest gifts, desire shows up in flesh and blood, birdsong and bloom. Desire speaks of our belovedness, God’s longing for us, and our longing for a full embrace of life.
