Crickets Chirping This Lenten Season

Back from a trip to Austin, with work to make up, papers to write, interviews to prepare for, further travel, classes to write and teach, and books and articles and more books to read. Thus there will be crickets chirping the silence of my busyness at the beginning of this Lenten season; hopefully I will have assorted quotes and poems up here and there, but I wanted to mark the occasion and note my relative absence in advance, as well as wish a blessing on the beginning of the season for everyone. As we enact disciplines to purify our bodies and lives of inessential or destructive distractions and habits, may God purify our hearts of the decrepit marriage of sin and death. To Jerusalem, to the cross, to the empty tomb: the Spirit leads inexorably, and always with surprises, to the hope of the world's, and our, redemption. Maranatha!