Long, Thin Days Interrupted

It's like the final leg of any long car trip -- the floorboards are littered with empty fast food bags, a cold french fry is crushed into the mat, maps and crayons are lost between the seats, and nerves are frayed. Everyone is on everyone's side of the car; no one seems capable of keeping "your hands to yourself." Whatever the appeal of the destination and regardless of the sights along the way, by this stage of the journey all is reduced to endurance. Bliss would be the nap that, at least for the span of it, would make it all go away. But sleep is as elusive as the mirage on the horizon; the miles and the hum of the road a kind of mortar and pestle that grind the last vestiges of vitality. Such are the trailing weeks of a bitter winter. Such are these final miles of a tediously long Presidential primary campaign.

Perhaps the value of an early Holy Week is the shock of its interruption. Out of an almost willed stupor, Palm Sunday snaps us and reminds us that something important is going on -- more important than politics and the numbing cacophony of innuendo, snipes and exaggerated misrepresentations; more important than even the swollen bellies of robins and the random eruptions of green. Something deep and fundamental is shifting the earth beneath us and stretching our soul within us, if we but have the spiritual eyes to see.

There is more to reality than Barack and Hillary and John; more even than the forecast of more flurries and falling temperatures. It may not lead the evening news or headline the morning paper, but since when have headlines ever captured the most important things going on?

It's Holy Week -- abruptly, surprisingly, gratefully -- and while we may not yet be home, we have turned an important corner. And sitting up a little straighter, we pay more watchful attention to what is really going on around us, to the nuances of the roadside along the journey, and to signs of our destination.

There are miles, we know, yet to go, but all of a sudden we are traveling them on different terms -- almost, and after what seems like a long, long time, alive.