My neighbor, Edoardo, known to family and friends as Dado, took advantage of an unusually Spring-like day to begin his work on our vines. As he separates and holds one branch at a time, he explains to me that he is cutting away last year’s growth to make way for the new growth this coming year as well as the year after. So with a clip of his cutters, the heavy, gnarled branch which had yielded plump purple grapes last September is cut and put aside.  Tilting his head in assessment, he assuredly cuts away all the other smaller vines which surround the few that he has selected to keep.  He then positions those promising branches for this year and next year, stretching them out along the supporting wire, taking a step back to make sure that he has left them enough space to grow.  “Ieri, oggi e domani” , yesterday, today and tomorrow, he says as he works the vines, seemingly holding time in his hands.

The beginning of Lent always causes me to pause and reflect, to push a little deeper, to think a little harder. My twin sister Mary sent me an e-mail on Ash Wednesday with a passage from the Catholic nun Sister Joan Chittister, who wrote: ” Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not…Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now…Lent is a summons to live anew…Lent is the time to let life in again, to rebuild the worlds we’ve allowed to go sterile, to “fast and weep and mourn” for the goods we’ve foregone. If our own lives are not to die from lack of nourishment, we must sacrifice the pride or the sloth or the listlessness that blocks us from beginning again. Then, as Joel (2:12-18) promises, God will have pity on us and pour into our hearts the life we know down deep that we are lacking. ”

So just as Dado with a snip cut away last year, looking to future growth, so will I push forward, with a renewed lenten recognition of the underlying support which my faith provides.