{"id":2727,"date":"2016-03-20T01:34:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T05:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/?p=2727"},"modified":"2016-12-15T08:09:02","modified_gmt":"2016-12-15T13:09:02","slug":"balance-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/balance-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

By the time you read this, spring will have made its arrival by the almanac: the equinox\u2013\u2013vernal here in the Northern Hemisphere, autumnal in the Southern\u2013\u2013came and went at 12:30 in the morning (Eastern Daylight Time) this 20th day of March. In traditional reckoning of time we are at spring’s height, its midpoint, and now are on the downhill ride toward summer. But no matter how you reckon your time, what is clear in all cases is this: balance. Day and night now are just about equal in length no matter where we are on the planet, and there is something about that balance that is wonderful (as in full of wonder): no matter what concerns we have in our lives, be they major or minor, the celestial clockwork continues.\u00a0If a vast planet of oceans and mountains can achieve balance, it gives us hope that we can, too.<\/p>\n

It is, as well today, Palm Sunday, setting the events of Holy Week in motion. We enter into the highest days of the Christian calendar. I have said this before in the Convivio Book of Days<\/em>: Palm Sunday has never been a favorite day of mine. The Mass is really long, the congregation gets to read but it’s almost always lackluster and halfhearted, and I never know if I should feel mourning or celebration. Father Seamus likes to say that attendance goes up whenever they give something away at church, even if it is just a couple of palms, even in this chlorophyll-laden land where we see palm trees every time we open our eyes.<\/p>\n

One of the more charming traditions for the day is the fashioning of crosses out of those palms. Some can be very elaborate: my mom’s cousin’s husband could turn a single palm frond into a cross with two flowers bursting out of its center. A lesser known tradition would have us eat figs on Palm Sunday, which comes out of the story of Christ\u2019s cursing of the fig tree, which occurred soon after he arrived in Jerusalem:<\/p>\n

In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, \u201cMay no fruit ever come from you again!\u201d And the fig tree withered at once.<\/em>\u00a0(Matthew 21: 18-19)<\/p>\n

And even this irritates me about Palm Sunday. This story sounds like something Teenager Jesus might have done.\u00a0Why curse a fig tree for having no fruit?\u00a0Be that as it may, some people make sure to eat figs on Palm Sunday just because of this verse and a similar one in Mark. They\u2019ll be eating dried figs, for sure, because it\u2019s not fig season. You\u2019d think Jesus would have known that, too.<\/p>\n

And with Palm Sunday\u2019s close, we begin to clean. Just as we \u201cmade our house fair as we are able\u201d during Advent, these next few days are days of making our house fair as we are able for the coming feast of Easter. By Wednesday night, the moon will be full and all should be done, and all distractions set aside, for the mysteries of Easter begin with Holy Thursday: one of my favorite nights of the year, a night rich with ceremony and ending in pilgrimage and peaceful contemplation, and I am of the mind that my disdain for Palm Sunday is more than made up for by my love for Maundy Thursday. And there it is, perhaps: that balance, manifested, as we stand here on a planet midway now between longest night and longest day.<\/p>\n

Image: “The Waterfall” by Anton Romako. Painting, late 19th century. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the time you read this, spring will have made its arrival by the almanac: the equinox\u2013\u2013vernal here in the Northern Hemisphere, autumnal in the Southern\u2013\u2013came and went at 12:30 in the morning (Eastern Daylight Time) this 20th day of March. In traditional reckoning of time we are at spring’s height, its midpoint, and now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,78,79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2727"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3844,"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2727\/revisions\/3844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.conviviobookworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}