By Missy Morain

I tried to skip Lent this year. It wasn’t entirely intentional. There wasn’t any conscious thought to it. I went to the Ash Wednesday service, got my ashes, and even led the Litany of Penitence from the center aisle of the National Cathedral. Yet my head was never really in it and I let other aspects of my life take over. I never came up with something to give up or to add into my day. Somehow living 1,000 miles away from my brother using my teenage standby of “I will get along with my brother” didn’t seem heartfelt or appropriate. Little did I know that Lent would catch up with me.

On the Saturday before Palm Sunday I awoke to phone call from my father telling me that my grandfather had gone into a coma. Around dinner time my mother called to tell me that my grandfather had died. I wasn’t surprised by either phone call. My grandfather was 94 years old and nothing at that age is really unexpected. Unlike the death of Jesus, Papa’s was relatively painless and peaceful, surrounded by people who loved him.

Quickly the mechanics of gathering a large family from across the country began. Life took over again. The details of arranging plane tickets, delayed flights, planning work coverage, getting on a plane, seeing my brother and sisters all took over the space which I could have created to begin grieving, to begin feeling. Allowing me to put aside what my mind and body were telling me to pay attention to.

I arrived in Iowa and went through the motions, attending the visitation and the funeral, even reading part of the family written obituary. Hearing those around me crying yet unwilling to break that barrier myself until I returned to Washington, DC the day after the funeral. Something broke inside me and I finally began to cry. For me Lent had finally begun.

Easter Sunday came only four days after my grandfather’s funeral. I had every intention of going to Easter service but couldn’t walk in the door when the time came. I wasn’t ready for the resurrection. I wasn’t ready to celebrate and say “alleluia, Christ has risen”.

Funny thing about the resurrection is that much like Lent it comes regardless of whether I am ready for it or not. Life works in cycles much like that of the liturgical year. Birth and death and renewal occur whether I am paying attention to them or not. The liturgical calendar of the church helps me to remember this and to remember that there is a point where I will feel ready to celebrate the resurrection again. I might not be there quite yet, and that is just fine, but it gives me hope to know that I will be ready eventually. Ready to say “Good Papa Fred” and hello to the new life, to the resurrection that surrounds me.

Missy Morain is program coordinator at the Cathedral College at Washington National Cathedral. She blogs at Episcopal Princess.

By Kit Carlson

This coming Sunday (6 Easter) was known, in a softer and more agricultural time, as Rogation Sunday. Along with the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before Ascension Day (this year on May 17), these were days to "beat the bounds" of the parish, to make a grand procession along the boundaries of a church's parish territory, through the farms and fields, to ask God's blessing on the upcoming harvest.

Like many Christian observances, Rogationtide was a reworking of an older, pagan tradition. The Robigalia, a Roman procession, used to be held in the spring to propitiate the god Robigo. Robigo's special area of expertise was keeping mildew off the crops. If properly beseeched, he could guarantee a successful harvest. Another, separate observance also got glued onto the Rogation processions, when in 470 AD, Bishop Mamerus of Vienne, in Gaul, held processional litanies after a time of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

The medieval church continued to observe these rites, but in the first wave of the English Reformation, they were tossed out as too pagan. Elizabeth I, who always liked a good parade, reinstituted them when she became queen. You can still find them carried out in some English villages.

But in America, our sense of the fragility of the harvest has faded. We harvest our foodstuffs in the supermarket, where frost in Florida or drought in California might push up the prices on our produce. But there will always be Chilean blueberries in January and rock-hard tomatoes year-round to convince us that food comes not from the ground, but from a store.

We have distanced ourselves from the seasons of the earth, from her vagaries and willfulness. We do not fear that one good storm will ruin our season, that an unexpected frost will destroy our orchards.

Some churches have turned to Rogationtide as a chance to connect to Earth Day, to issues of environmental stewardship, to remind ourselves to take better care of "this fragile earth, our island home." And with the very real threat of global warming, this is not an issue to be taken lightly.

But I wonder if we have missed the point of Rogationtide in that case. The word Rogation comes from the Latin rogare, "to ask". It is essentially a lengthy tour of prayer and propitiation through the very sustaining places of life, one that acknowledges that in the end, we are powerless to grant ourselves all we need to survive. It is a season that does not ask us to exercise better control. It is a season that acknowledges that God has control.

And we do not.

So perhaps a better Rogation observance this Sunday might be to walk the borders of your land, the rooms of your home, the hallways of your office building, the sidewalks of your shopping center and pray that they might stay safe and whole. It might be a good day to remember New Orleans' Ninth Ward, the ice storms of the past winter, the tornado the leveled Greensburg, Kansas last week, and the thunderstorms that topple trees and tear up houses. It might be a good day to think about those we have loved and lost to cancer, or heart disease or HIV/AIDS. It might be a good day to remember the students and community of Virginia Tech, how suddenly their peace was shattered, how swiftly death and terror came upon them.

And remember that we do not have control, really. That there is much about our lives that is completely dependent on fair weather, on good health, on a kind of routine-ized and boring everyday safety.

Walk and pray, And ask. Ask for those things we count upon but cannot really give ourselves. Acknowledge God's providence, God's mercy, God's presence in each of those things we need and care for and take completely for granted.

Rogare.

Ask.

The Rev. Kit Carlson, is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, Mich. She played the apostle Paul on the world's first internet reality series, The Ark, a project of the Christian humor website Ship of Fools.