It is said that the month of March either enters as a lamb
and departs as a lion or vice versa. Garrison Keillor quipped that God invented
March to show people who don’t drink what a hangover is like. It’s a month of
sudden changes in weather—one day can bring a blizzard, the next 70°
temperatures. For Catholics, it’s a month of penitence interrupted by the
feasts of St. Patrick, St. Joseph, and the Annunciation. What are we to do with
this month of contradictions?
The poet Walt Whitman would tell us to embrace March’s
contradictions, along with the contradictions within ourselves. He famously
said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large,
I contain multitudes.” Similarly, Whitman’s contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
Consistency, sameness, routine, and boundaries can offer us
the comfort of knowing what to expect. However, they can also be stifling when
they blind us to the multitudes within ourselves. Such multitudes are surely in
us because the God of multitudes dwells in us through the boundary-less Christ.
May the March winds remind us to be open to change, to newness, to the surprise
of what God will be doing in us next.
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