…No recipe so captures the essence of Lent as does the ever-popular Potato-On-a-Plate. Here in the steaming spud rolling about alone on a stark white plate is a powerful metaphor for the humble Lenten soul, with God alone its expectation. God of course is represented by the life-giving parsley.

You have only to boil a potato for each dining participant and distribute them among the dinner plates. An austere sprinkling of salt completes the Spartan presentation. The simplicity of this repast will so overwhelm family members that words will fail them. Instead, there will be wide-eyed wonder regarding the startlingly small dimensions of the meal, and cries of joy that parsley has been included. This will naturally bring all diners into a greater awareness of the need to simplify one’s life during the Lenten spring. It will also prompt a voracious search, once the potatoes have been eaten, for another source of calories.

It is the muted white morning of Bright Monday, a pearl after yesterday’s sparkling Paschal jewel. In the yard, curls of cottony fog tangle the branches, clutching their soft pastel smudges of spring buds. Wet black limbs blend to a borderless cocoon of sky, tucking us in with our groggy, early morning musings. Yesterday’s uprising of sunshine and delights gave the illusion summer would burst upon us any moment. Now I am startled to remember we are in the throes of a still-fragile springtime, struggling to emerge.

Pascha has come and gone, leaving us in the dust. We are children at the side of the road, hands still stuffed with confetti after the parade has passed by. I wonder how I can bear this pale, motionless day after yesterday’s riotous color and noise. The memory is already precious, the odes of the canon of the midnight office pouring over us in the chill of pre-dawn, harmonies stretching us Godward, their shimmering strains threatening to break our hearts…

© 2007 Jean Hoefling

Sample Acronym Song for a lending company

IT’S TEAM WORK (“Say, Hey I Love You” by Michael Franti)

We say hey goin’ strong today

Prob’ly doesn’t always feel that way

Seems like everywhere you go

The more things change

The less you know

But you know one thing

It takes teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

There’ve been a lot of changes all around the way

Changes to the HELOC, CBU and FHA

But you speak a common language yes indeed,

APR, HOA, PMI, LTV

An ARM is not a limb but an adjustable rate

GFE is a thing that is done in good faith

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not a girl and a boy

As of 2008 they’re a government toy

CHORUS

Now I’m not a highly “acronymical” man

But when you’re into lending you must do what you can

HECM (pronounced Heckem) is a mortgage that you do in reverse

2010 (twenty ten) GFE made everything worse

Working as a team is the best thing you can do

Making all the changes move in step with you

Drink a cup of coffee to relax

Not the Cost of Funds Index

We say hey goin’ strong today

Prob’ly doesn’t always feel that way

Seems like everywhere you go

The more things change

The less you know

But you know one thing

It takes teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

It’s teamwork

Crampons spark against rock in the darkness before dawn as we grind over scree above Camp Muir. The sun climbs. I unzip my chartreuse parka; I am too hot yet not warm enough in the fever of overexertion. The morning is too bright, filtering into an eerie aquamarine slash of crevasse that looms deep as we edge across an ice bridge. We traverse an infinite snowfield pocked with sun cups. The grip of the ice axe brings spasms to my numbed hands; trail mix is gravel in my mouth. The world grows narrow– too narrow.

When I know there is nothing left, I stop inching toward the summit in the garish morning. There is no summit, no ascent or descent. There is only the endless mountain against a nightmare of blue-black sky. The narrow fades to gray.

Through the shroud I hear my father bark an order to Billy, to dig the stove out and make tea. My brother makes and pours the tea out, fire in a Sierra cup. I drink it under the nightmare sky pressing down against the mountain, down against a girl drugged with cold and exhaustion in a chartreuse parka.

There is sudden comfort; Dad and Billy have unzipped their own jackets to press their warmth to mine, in the offer of their blood-life to my revival. The heat of sick, sweet tea scalds and spreads. I want only to succumb.

But I do not succumb. Not to the blue-black sky, the inferno of sunburn or the panic that washes in torrents through my chest. Something within is stronger. Out of a core of single desire, my will pushes through. It comes from a strong place; too strong even for Tahoma, the mountain of legend, to resist.

At the summit I bask at the crater’s warm lip, only mildly delirious from altitude in that haloed world above the clouds, where tendrils of steam rise out of the snow…

© 2009 Jean Hoefling