By Andrea Lingle

“Always visualize your soul as vast, spacious, and plentiful. This amplitude is impossible to exaggerate.” -St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, p. 45

I [John] baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Matthew 3:11

There is a vast plain below you. There, on the meadow, threaded with waving grasses and Queen Anne’s Lace, is a castle. While it looks sturdy enough, it is not a fortress. The walls are generously perforated with windows, gleaming in the sun reflecting off a pond in the front lawn. This castle faces west. The road leading to the front porch is paved with pea gravel, and along the edges of the road, tucked in the clumps of clover and larkspur, rabbit burrow-holes hint at the network of additional homes underlying the peaceful meadow. Along the south side of the castle are rows upon rows of sunflowers. They pour like a golden river from the corner of the castle to well past the back edge, inviting a wanderer to flow along on rambles unknown. It is a luxury of color in a sea of green. The castle itself is built out of pink granite molded by a million years of quartz under pressure. 

A lamp is lit in the library, and the front door is open. 

This is Ash Wednesday. We have scoured our pantries for frivolity, and stripped our shelves to their hardy basics. This is a time of serious reflection, self-evaluation, and fasting. Surely this is not a time to imagine pink castles swaddled in blooms. Grief. Sobriety. Restriction. That is what Lent is about. 

Yes. It is. Lent is a season of introspection, which is utterly necessary, because we have forgotten what is hidden beneath the paraphernalia of pandemic worry, broken systems, divisive language, petty squabbles, and 365 days. It has been a year since we submitted to ashes, and the chaff has accumulated. We have grown weary of the effort it takes to resist becoming hard and cynical. Changing climates, global tension, economic inscrutability keep us from looking every moment in the eye.The minutes we have wasted mock us from the corner of our minds; while we know we cannot reclaim these moments, they were so heavy that we had to let a few drop. 

In the face of the screaming news-heads and the relentless drip of the pressure of work and community, is it possible to allow that there is room for something ineffable to lie between the cracks in the driveway? Could there be something beyond the lens of the microscope or the control of the market? Do you long for there to be something deeply true about the universe? 

More than ever we need to carve away the scales that have hardened over our souls. You who has lost hope, let us crunch along the drive toward a pink castle. You of the faked smile, let us follow our footsteps along a flower-gilded path. You with those grief-stained cheeks, let us dare to cross this threshold. 

Today, let us take up the mantle of ash, imagining that what lies beneath the rubble of minds is a soul, spacious, glorious, and beloved. Let us take a step onto the path of sorrow, wondering if, like baptism, we will come out changed.