'tis the Season

There was a time in my life when I looked forward to Christmas and Easter.  But now I am at the point when I look forward to Advent and Lent.  I find there to be just something so powerful in the seasons of watchful waiting or self deprivation that makes those “holidays” seems all the more real.   The seasons put the holidays in context for me, and help me realize more fully what it is we’re celebrating. 

The other day we had a lunar eclipse, the last one we are to experience for sometime.  And I found myself riveted.  It was a slow, nearly majestic execution of the moon, taking nearly two hours from its start to totality.  And then there was nothing, for nearly an hour.  Darkness screamed at me from the void once filled by the full moon.  And as I strained to look at the darkness, I realized that, before my eyes, it became light again.  Relief.  The radiance pierced the night sky – first a sliver, then more, and then finally the total magnitude of the full moon.  Order had been restored.

And so now, in the midst of lent, I find myself doing a research rotation at a cancer center.  Cancer really is a bit like a season.  While we have a tendency to look at the end-point, we realize that the cancer has been there for sometime, growing steadily and deliberately, bringing its message not in a day nor in a treatment but rather over the course of many days and many treatments.  And while the climax is all too often not the way we hope for, its end is sometimes accompanied by the restoration of order, or at least by a certain sense of relief.

I hate cancer.  But if I am to be surrounded by it, let it be in this season of lent – a season whose promise is one that beats cancer every time.