Palm Sunday

Hosanna in the highest.

Forty days ago, I stepped quietly away. It is good to be back.

My Lenten Journey took me from the noise of social media. From the small comforts of alcohol and sweets. From meat on Fridays. From the constant hum of stimulation that so easily replaces presence.

In their place, I chose something older. Slower. More human. Forty handwritten letters. Every morning for forty days I began by lighting a candle, burning frankincense, playing devotional music, and turning my thoughts and prayers toward a love.

Pen to paper. Ink that does cannot delete itself despite the poor penmanship. Words that must be chosen, shaped, and sealed. Enveloped. Stamped. Sent out into the world with no certainty of arrival, only trust. From my hand and heart to yours. Each letter a small act of devotion—to friendship, to love, to repair. Some were easy. Others trembled in the hand. A few reached toward places where something had long been fractured. In the writing, something in me mended.

I mostly held the fast. Not perfectly, but faithfully. And perhaps that is all that is ever asked for Lent. To be faithful—pray, fast, give alms.

Today is Palm Sunday. I found myself in a different church, as our priest fell ill. I got word after I had already laid out the red vestments for Mass. So, I carefully put them away, prayed for his healing, locked the church, and drove forty-five minutes to attend a late morning Mass in another parish. The church itself large, alive with a different expression of the faith. Girls serving on the altar. Eucharistic ministers moving among the people. A more progressive body than my small country parish, where the old world still breathes through the liturgy.

And yet, grace was there.

I felt it in the gathered voices, in the procession of palms, in the simple fact of showing up. The Church, in all her forms, still holds. And I found myself grateful—deeply so—for the chance to attend Mass at all.

At home, the sugaring season has come to its close. A short season this year. The fires have gone quiet, the sap has given what it could, and the final jars are sealed. There is always something bittersweet in that ending—the work complete, the family and friends who came to help sent home with a jar of sweet labour, the trees resting, the land shifting. Buckets and pots and spigots cleaned and stored for next year. A true sign of transition.

And now, we prepare to go. On Wednesday, we leave for Greece.

A pilgrimage.

To Kos. To Patmos. To Athens.
To the Cave of the Apocalypse—where John of Patmos received his visions.
To the waters and stones that have held the prayers of centuries.

It is also our twenty-five-year anniversary. A journey of love, yes—but also of listening. Of remembering. Of standing inside a story much larger than our own. And, while we are gone, our beloved pets and home will be lovingly cared for by Grace. Yes, that is her name. And it feels, somehow, exactly right.

This Lent has been unexpectedly fertile.

I find myself writing three books at once: Mater Misericordiae, St. John the Evangelist and the Wisdom of the Sage, and The Third Fire of a Neo-Jungian way. The drafted chapters are beginning to move outward now, into the careful hands of beta readers. There is a particular vulnerability in this stage—a quiet offering of what has been gestating in the dark. And when someone tells me that Muriel Pages have been filling their desk tops and conversations, I feel so blessed. I am sure there is no better feeling for a writer than to feel that the words have a life of their own. That they walk into people’s lives and stir their hearts.

The muses are with me and I am grateful. I feel accompanied.

Around me, life continues in its full and often painful measure. Friends are grieving. Family members are undergoing surgery. The body, in its own way, speaks of limits and endurance. Suffering is not abstract—it is here, woven into the days, asking something of us.

And still—the land is waking. Shaking off the stiffness of winter. Stretching toward spring. The snow recedes. The sap runs. The light returns. There is a softness in the air that was not there a week ago. Something ancient is stirring again. Birdsong heralds the great returning.

We are asked, at the end of these forty days, to notice: are we different?

I am.

Not in any dramatic or finished way. But closer. Closer to my faith. Closer to my own voice. Closer to the quiet thread of destiny that has been weaving itself beneath the surface of things for a very long time.

The world feels like it is trembling on the edge of something. Everywhere, a kind of apocalypse—not simply destruction, but unveiling. The old forms cracking. The hidden revealed. The pattern of transformation moving through us all.

And perhaps this is what Lent prepares us for.

To stay.
To fast from what numbs.
To write the letters that must be written.
To walk toward the holy places—both within and without.
To trust that even in the breaking open, something sacred is being made.

Hosanna in the highest.

And onward, now—toward the cave, the sea, and the Word that still speaks.