"Transitional Zones (Lent!) are Where Life Happens"

The intertidal zone is the area where land and sea meet. This habitat is covered with water at high tide, and exposed to air at low tide. The land in this zone can be rocky, sandy or covered in mudflats. It is a perilous place for organisms to make a go of it – at times underwater, and times drying out, continually buffeted by wave and wind, ever-changing salinity, exposed to predators from above and below. And yet it is a place of amazing biological diversity and adaptation, where life if abundant and varied.

Transitional zones are where life happens. The continental shelf has far more species, a much more vibrant habitat, than the deep ocean. The boundaries where different types of habitat meet are the places where life abounds, and where change happens.

In the same way, it is in life’s transitional times that, for all the pain and struggle, life, real life, abounds. What we all want, we say, is life to just settle down, to be stable, predictable, routine. But then something happens, and everything changes --- the job is lost, the cancer diagnosis arrives, the relationship falls through.  And there is struggle, there is pain, at times it even seems like life itself is at stake.  And who would ever want to be in those shoes? And yet…

And yet, the one facing cancer can actually say – yes, it does happen! – that they are thankful for what they are facing, because it is woken them up to appreciate the gift and joy of this day, this one special day, this gorgeous hydrangea which they really appreciated before, this sunrise that they actually stopped to watch, this love which they never fully appreciated before.

And yet, the one grieving over the lost job at times wakes up and sees the blessing in it, the opportunity to start over and do what they had always wanted to do, or the chance to re-evaluate their priorities and what all that “stuff” really means to them.

Fully one-half of the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark is concerned with only one week – the last week -- of the life of a man who we suspect lived maybe some thirty years.  It is a week of suffering, trial, and death – but it is also a week of life lived to the hilt, and beyond. Maybe this is part of what we should be about in the season of Lent, a season that started yesterday, Ash Wednesday -- living life to the hilt, growing into our full humanity, using the love we have been blessed with to love ourselves, our neighbors near and far, our God....

 Transitional times are hard. But they can also be times of life, and life abundant.