Late March. The snow piles are mostly gone, but there is still a chill in the air. The light is beginning to grow, but we're still waiting for that burst of warm Spring sunshine. Will winter ever end? Will Lent ever end? Thus we arrive at church on Passion Sunday and are immediately plunged into heights and depths of emotion ("Hosanna in the highest!" "Crucify him, crucify him!"). Holy Week begins.

Holy Week: a time of intense contrasts. This week we experience the most theatrical liturgies of the year: a process with palms ending in a crucifixion on Passion Sunday; footwashing, a fellowship meal, and a stripped altar on Maundy Thursday; St. John's Passion and a stark wooden cross on Good Friday; a blaze of candles, glorious music, and baptismal vows at the Easter Vigil.

To give ourselves over wholly to any or all of these liturgies can be overwhelming and exhausting. We may turn with relief to the everyday tasks before us--work, childcare, cooking and washing--looking for respite from the dizzying pace of this week's communal drama.

Yet even these mundane tasks can seem strangely affected by our Holy Week observances. Everything, even dyeing Easter eggs or polishing church brass, can have a subdued air. An air of quiet expectancy, of unspoken hope. For here is the Holy Spirit, in that still place, brooding over our souls, preparing for the Easter light of resurrection to crack our shells. And we are reborn.