THE. SNOW. IS. MELTING!!!!
I am pretty excited about this. Yesterday, my husband and I took our dog to the park to walk after a long winter hibernation. We were not alone. The paths were crowded with prisoners set free from the bondage of subzero temperatures. We sprung the clock forward and were launched into spring, or so it seems.
My husband announced this morning, “I packed my winter coat away.” I walked across campus in just jeans and a sweater. The sun is shining and it looks like we’ll hit the high forties and low fifties most every day this week. Yippee!
Spring is so hopeful. I just know that under the thick crust of snow, some daffodils are waking up and thinking about breaking the surface of the soil. As the dingy whiteness melts into the river, fresh green grass will sprout and blanket the yard outside our home. It’ll be fresh and new.
I could use a little ‘new’. Could you?
Some friends and I are meeting once a week to talk about turning, repenting, resting, renewing, and re-setting. It’s a pretty Lutheran/Lenten thing to do, really. We start with Ash Wednesday acknowledging that “dust we are and to dust we shall return.” We enter the Lenten season contemplatively, acknowledging the truth about ourselves and admitting — “I’m getting it all wrong.” So, these friends and I are really opening ourselves up to one another and inviting one another to ask, “How can I turn from this? How can I rest in this? How can I be renewed? How can I re-set?”
I didn’t really give anything up for Lent, but the addition of this weekly community of confession — of agreeing with one another that we don’t have it all figured out — has provided a space for me to be ok with my insufficiencies, to openly admit that I am a work in progress.
Now that may not be revolutionary for you, but for me it’s a space that I haven’t always allowed myself. I have spent a lot of energy over the years thinking I was right, justifying my actions, and plowing over (or simply ignoring) those who didn’t agree with me.
I mean, as long as I’m confessing, why hold back, right?
Over the years in my classroom, I often taught my students that “anybody can change.” This was one of my many “mini-sermons” I gave to teach life lessons. I would give the “anybody can change” sermon when students were annoyed with coaches, other teachers, each other, or their parents. I would say, if we expect that people will never change, we don’t allow them the space to make changes. I sometimes cited as an example a former student who prided himself on being the class clown. He disrupted almost every class he attended and found himself meeting with the Admissions Review Board on more than one occasion. We would say, “You are a natural born leader. Please, use that power for good! Lead your peers positively, not negatively.” For four years, we encouraged this student to change. For four years we believed he could. Yet, as he walked across the stage at graduation, we were still witnessing the immature disruptive student. Three years later, the student showed up at my classroom door — shirt and tie, freshly cropped, and somewhat sheepish looking. He wanted to let me know that he had become the captain of the football team at his university and that he had made the dean’s list. “You were right, Mrs. Rathje.” Anybody can change.
Now, I usually tell that story to point out the fact that anybody can change, but also to show what an amazing teacher I am — see what an impact I had on that student! But really, the object lesson is for me.
Anybody can change. Anybody can turn. Anybody can re-set. Even me.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away; behold the new has come.
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