Madelynn Winstead, ENDOW Board Member and editor, Colorado

How does one speak about the season of Lent in one simple paragraph? This is a difficult task, choosing one’s words very carefully, getting the most out of every syllable. My first thought was simple and straightforward: “I was made for Lent, born with a hair shirt, as they say.” So perhaps it’s only my melancholic temperament, which draws me to this yearly time of self-denial and penitential practices. And yet, Lent is so much more than giving up chocolate and turning off the television (although these things are admirable and good). For me, Lent is a process that requires tilling the soil in preparation for spring. It’s doing the hard work, breaking new ground and clearing away the debris of fear and failure, compromise and complacency. This is the work that causes a sweat and makes your muscles ache. It requires us to dive into deep water, where we know we can no longer stand. A few years ago, I said good-bye to my son on Ash Wednesday, as he gathered his company of Marines and boarded a plane for Iraq. That Lent was seven months long and at times I felt the water rising up to my neck. But that is the beauty of Lent, the beauty of keeping your head above the water line and learning how to "breathe" God.

Madelynn Winstead, ENDOW Board Member and editor, Colorado

Lenten Journey

Reaching down into the darkness;
Moving slowly through moist earth;
The seedling grows by day unnoticed
Plunged into a primal search.
We are sensing, driving, reaching
For that sustenance by night;
An umbilical connection to unquenchable streams of Light
Our portion is acceptable;
The water drawn is livable;
These are the depths from which we cry;
Holding fast, holding fast as the hem of a garment passes by.

Madelynn Winstead, ENDOW Board Member and editor, Colorado

Winter Fast

In midwinter
the silence is deep calling on deep;
A footprint or footfall unheard;
The hidden root of springs long forgotten
And yet present in minute potentiality.

It is the biological prototype that holds the secret—
The Word that speaks out of chaos into being;
While a thousand variations on the theme of white and grey
Wait for that first steel shaft of sunlight
To penetrate each layer deeper still.
As Death’s dark angel sheaths his sword.