This year has been a parade of losses. Each month, sometimes each week, often each day greets me with another loss to celebrate. Not celebrate as in happy-happy, but celebrate as in observe, release, let go… and as St. Benedict so wisely counsels: begin again.

I think I will get better at it. And maybe I have. Losses no longer feel like the twist of a surgeon’s knife without anesthetic. Now I approach the anniversaries of loss as friends. The passing of time helps, but the passing of a marked time becomes a guidepost.  Once I move beyond experiencing a particular loss for a first time… I am opened to a different kind of hopefulness. It seems to take the passing or marking of an anniversary of loss to actually begin again.

This Lenten season marks another succession of losses. Personal losses. And the losses we commemorate in our Sacred Story. The loss of time, of betrayal, of freedom, of life. The loss we feel when we experience the absence of Godde.

Only this year I anticipate the resurrection. This year I remember that Godde invites us into Holy Future even if it looks nothing like what we thought it would.  This year Easter comes with new promises of new life. This year as the anniversary of another loss looms, I will rise. Like the one in whose Way I seek to follow.  And I will begin again.