March 4 | Saturday in the First Week of Lent

Our country is split into two worlds. In one, the downtowns are filled with nightlife, restaurants, well maintained bike paths and pedestrian crosswalks.You can tell if you are in this world by counting the grocery stores. In this world, the residents are confident and can responsibly address the challenges their community must overcome. They understand what plans should be made to prepare for the future. Surely, there are apprehensions and anxieties about the present and the future but these are mostly about compromised dreams or mistakes by leaders or simply trying to do too much too soon.

There is another world. And it sits near the first world. It is a world with an endangered present and an imperiled future. It is the wrong that has to be endured. There are frustrations that seem to be insurmountable. It is a world of deepening problems based on very limited resources and fewer options. Stores disappear. Childcare is scarce, undependable and expensive. Factories close. Jobs are lost. Clinics move away. Schools merge. 

As Graham Greene once wrote: “We would forgive most things if only we knew the facts.” But we do not know the facts and never will. There are so many happenstances, and accidents and whys and wherefores that seem to determine what happens to us. 

“Grace makes no conditions and singles no one of us in particular. Grace holds us to her bosom and proclaims a general amnesty. See! That which we have has been given us. What we have chosen has been given to us. And what we have refused has still been allowed us. All that we have rejected has been poured out upon us. In our lives mercy and truth have met together. We must try to ensure that righteousness and happiness kiss one another.” 

-Isak Dinesen, Anecdotes of Destiny

May the gardens grow like jungles. May nature never be tamed.