I learned early in my life that there are inside brooms and outside brooms.

When we moved into the last house we owned, there was a broom and dustpan in the kitchen that I’m supposing belonged to Mrs. Rogers.  She lived over 50 years of marriage and her last days in that house on the Avenue. On my last day as the owner, I used that very broom to say goodbye.  I lovingly swept each room in gratitude for the abundance of our life there.

We know the history of this house in Victoria on another Avenue.  This one, too, was home to a family for over 50 years.  Health challenges, for both the house and owners, prevailed in later years and then the house sat in solitude for a few more. Now we rent the home where Kay grew up and she is honouring the house in tangible ways, painting and repairing and putting in new parts.  After caring for her parents, she is now caring for the memories, and Mitch and I listen with care to her stories that still live within these walls.

The yard isn’t large but it is overwhelming. K left the yard tools for us inexperienced gardeners. Work will begin next week to repair the shed and carport in the back. When I knew we needed to follow Rachel Held Evans’ inspiration to turn something ugly into something beautiful as a Lenten practice, the backyard became that new vision.

The daffodils and crocuses helped.  They appeared—a shock of bright life even when clouds filled cool days.  I noticed waiting hanging baskets, earthworms languishing in the soil, and a hint of new growth at the base of an old stick that once held a rose.  A nurse tree stump is home to unknown beauty—the trailing cotoneaster bush, lush mosses, and unknown greenery rest in and around the sturdy base.  A weathered garden gnome keeps watch. 

We can learn to care for these treasures and nurture the life that is already here. We raked the sticks and leftover leaves.  Mitch cleaned out and turned over the dirt bed near the fence and I planted Asters freely offered by a stranger cleaning out her flowerbeds. Together, Mitch and I participated with those shoots of new life and the earth’s worm labourers in practicing resurrection, to renew this yard and our selves.

And then, the next day came and the next.  All I could see was the weeds, the overgrown grass in the cracks, the care I didn’t know how to manage in my quest for newness.  I thought of buying some flowers for the hanging baskets of dirt I filled.  I wondered about hanging the baskets or something else on the fence outside the kitchen window, but I wasn’t sure.  I asked my friend Jean about pruning the rose bushes but she said it wasn’t time yet.

But, this house came with a broom, too, a stiff one with worn-off bristles that Mitch thought useless.  That’s something I know how to do: sweep.  So, I did. 

Whether the bottom of that broom was purposefully cut off or simply worn down with use, it works.  That dense pack of straw makes a hearty sweeping sound and loosens grime on the time-worn cement porch of the shed and carport.  I scooped up everything in the corners, disrupting a few of my fellow workers who scurried off to find another shelter under the thin rotting wall. 

Sweeping was an act of restoration for this moment.  All those leaves and sticks and dirt will return with the wind. The little creatures will come back to re-inhabit those corners.  The grass will grow back in that crevice between the cement and the asphalt of the driveway. 

Sweeping is what I knew to do.  Then, I watched the sun illuminate the lush lacy growth surrounding the daffodils.  I was certain the earthworms were nourishing this growth. I am included in the earth’s revival.

Dryer lint.    

Dryer lint was the inspiration for “Sawatsky’s Sign-off,” the last story on our local newscast. Something about this particular story made me take notice—the creativity, found beauty, care for the environment, and use of art to speak volumes.  The artist Margie has a keen eye for the impossible.

Margie’s dryer lint creations, as Adam Sawatsky reported, explore the biggest issues of the human condition: a figurative work about being more loving, abstracts about our impact on the environment, pieces that migrated into each other over time to make a new result and shared as trading cards.  All inviting us to tangibly see our world through another lens.

Fast-forward just a day or two. In the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep, I continued reading Rachel Held Evan’s book, Wholehearted Faith. Rachel explained her inspiration to turn something ugly into something beautiful as a Lenten practice.  Over 40 days, she “let her fingers pray out” origami swans and sailboats and foxes from pages of hateful mail and she learned some things.

And it struck me, that is what Margie did with the dryer lint that she couldn’t just throw away.  And, what Mike Martin and his dad Fred began doing after the Sandy Hook tragedy.  Mike and Fred literally turn guns into garden tools in their garage blacksmith shop in Colorado.  And I’m certain you might have your own story to tell about practicing resurrection.

Rachel Held Evans wrote, “whether it’s turning an AK-₄₇ into a rake, an old tire into a flower bed, or trash into a work of art, there is something profoundly fitting about struggling through the creative process with the goal of finishing something new by Easter to provide a tangible, hands-on experience in discipline, resurrection, and restoration.”  I knew this was something Mitch and I needed to figure out how to do together, especially this spring of 2022. 

We have been sheltered here on this Island where we live compared to most of the world.  I watch images of violence and hate that fill pages of our newspaper. We witness crowds of protestors of Old Growth logging and the outpouring of support for the Ukrainian people and linger near the hundreds of children’s’ shoes and stuffed animals that line the steps of the BC legislature building in our city.  Each pair represent a child who never returned home from the church-run residential schools in our province.  These are sorrows we carry together. 

So what will it change if I use my hands to heal something I can see?  Something that I will have to struggle to learn how to affect for good?

Rachel said she learned that “we are meant to remake this world together.  We hurt together and we are called to heal together, forgive together, and create together.’

Today, Mitch and I are going to begin our almost 40 days of hands-on care for what has been neglected for a very long time in our own backyard.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  Traditionally, I understand these 40 days before Easter as a time of self-examination, letting go of the old, readying for something new.  And to be honest, we seem to have done a lot of that during the pandemic and I am not exactly sure what to do with some of my discoveries.

So, I was struck with something Marilyn McEntyre wrote in Adverbs for Advent another reflective time in the Christian calendar.

Simply… expect that we will be given what we need for our own

growth—that we will be invited again and again to awaken, pay

attention, learn, stretch into love in new ways, practice discernment,

exercise generosity or rest, and be held in a rich and joyous way of life

The sun peeked through the clouds; so, I decided to ride my bike to get an onion and a cucumber that I needed for supper.  I started out a different way than I usually go and realized the road was a little more “uphill” than I wanted to climb.  I abruptly took the next turn.  I happened to be a few blocks from Willow Beach. 

I decided to stop. I parked my bike in the rack on the least traveled end of the beach. There weren’t many beach walkers.  A few dogs fetched driftwood and a lone young man braved entering the chilly water. I walked close to the ripple of approaching water.  I am ever in awe of the changing tide and the spaciousness of the sea and sky. 

When I turned from the water toward my bike, I noticed a lady who appeared to be putting something into my helmet that was tied to the handlebars.  She turned and walked on with her friend.

As I approached, I could see the thick green leaves of the surprise she left—a branch of bay leaves.  On a paper heart, the lady had spelled out the benefits of adding the bay leaf’s freshness to the lentils and rice I’d planned for dinner.  I stuffed the bouquet in my backpack, smiling now as I started out for the market.  Everyone seemed friendlier as I made my way into the store.  The ride home seemed easier too.

Maybe, Lent 2022 is a journey from old visions of our lives that have been upended, and instead of figuring out whatever “it” is for us; we will risk being surprised by new im-possibilities. I can trust that each day will offer its own invitation and when my mind is quiet, I will hear the Voice I most need to hear.