By Anna Blaedel On the first day of Spring, I walked down the block to thank the crocus, sprung from the thawing soil the week before. Little patches of purple, emerging from melting snow and decaying leaves. Color returning to the greyscale of Iowa’s winter palette. Day and night, dark and light–rebalancing, and finding new alignment. Lent comes from lengthen, the lenten season marked by lengthening days. In the 1300s, lent was often called springing time, the season when plants and all sorts of lifeforms, dormant over the fall and winter, begin to grow again, springing from the earth. To...
