stung by reality numb with grief we bend our knees and kiss the ground the nettle rises green and sharp, a softly savage lenten wound that hurts for days-- then heals our holiest hopes.
What is the cure for being stung by reality, a prickly numbness that reacts when touched and lasts for days at a time? Whatever shall we do to ease the discomfort—personal, communal, national, global—that is such a common bedfellow of this greening, changeling season of Lent?
While Advent has the habit of arriving just when we need it, Lent always seems to enter right when we’re least certain we can handle it. A time traditionally for fasting, or for weeping, or for shame, or for pilgrimage, it does not have the candlelit majesty of its sister, Advent. Instead, Lent grows like nettles around a stone table, waiting for the eventual sacrifice; a burden often too heavy to bear.
But did you know that Lent—the word itself—means spring?
That such a sharp season should come after the death of winter is meaningful. It means the ancients knew a lot more about the seasons than we do, for a start.
Let me tell you a secret about nettles:
What stings can also heal. What causes pain can soothe our bodies. Nettles are one of the healthiest herbs we can eat, a wildling that fills and fortifies, called an adaptogen in western herbalism for the way it helps all of the body's systems adapt to daily stresses. And the sting? The relief for the sting is contained in the plant itself. When you grasp the nettle firmly and rub the leaf between your fingers, the juice within kills the pain.
Lent is the same. What stings us can heal us. The remedy is in the leaf. What we mourn can show us the way forward. What we repent of can be our redemption. When we emerge from the stresses of Lent we often emerge whole, fortified. The nettle-grown stone table is broken; death itself has lost its sting, tumble-turned backwards.
In Lent we find the glory and grief of life itself, rising up from winter’s quiet to meet the spring sun. If we grasp the nettle, we may yet find ourselves soothed.
As we stand at the doorway to Lent, what stings need soothing in your heart, this season?
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Too many stings to list!!! Thank you for this reminder and I love the insight nature gives us. Another thing (at least in the UK this is the case) about nettles is that where you find them you always find Docken Leaves growing next to them. When those stingy bumps appear on the skin from nettles crush up a Docken Leaf and rub the juice on the bumps. Give it a minute or so and the pain is gone and the bumps go away. The remedy plant growing next to the stinging plant. There’s probably a name for that(?). The way God designed things to be in nature is mind blowing!