What rough beast?

Remember that old phrase: "We interrupt this program to bring you this special announcement"? The Divine breaks into our lives in surprising ways sometimes, interrupting our busy schedules with gifts of love, or light, or self-awareness, or humor -- and sometimes terror, horror, or deep deep sadness.

So I know I'm "supposed" to be writing about Lent these days, and the slow process of self-discovery and healing that always occurs during this season, but I really wanted to share this interruption we received yesterday.

I had taken our dog, Nemo, for his customary walk, and he turned right off the boardwalk instead of left as he usually does. Okay, I thought, no problem, I can be flexible about this. But when we were in the middle of our neighbor's portion of the beach this lovely lady lumbered out from behind the giant driftwood stump that sits about a hundred yards down from our house.

Though you can't tell from this photo, she was close to seven feet long, and almost four feet high standing up (if you can call it that). What amused me was that Nemo -- who believes he owns the beach, and exerts his authority by barking and chasing anything else that dares to step on it, whether human, bird or dog -- was struck speechless. He stopped dead in his tracks, planted his butt firmly in the sand and just stared -- and mama lion stared right back.

Eventually I was able to drag him away, but he kept looking back as we headed home. You could almost see his doggie wheels turning: What WAS that thing? Should I be defending my beach? Is it coming after me? He was so stunned he forgot to pee, and we had to go out again later.

I remember the day the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. I was standing in the doorway of my daughter's bedroom and staring at the radio, and one part of me was attempting to process the horror of the news while another part of me was shaking her head because the announcers on this college rock station were young and inexperienced, and they were relaying the story in a very unprofessional manner, repeating with trembling voices what they were hearing on NPR, which you could hear playing in the background.

I think at times like these a separation happens -- or perhaps we become more aware of the separation within us that already exists. Perhaps one part of us is always present in the moment, feeling whatever voltage is there, while another part of us is always distancing itself, busily churning away with critical observations or hastily mounted survival plans.

And what does this have to do with Lent, and the Divine breaking in? Maybe it's just that by taking on the disciplines of Lent -- whatever they may be -- we invite a deeper awareness of all those things: the Divine interventions, the sense of separation, the way our brains churn and churn under stress. I've always had those mixed feelings this time of year, even when I wasn't consciously observing Lent. And now I wonder if maybe it's a response to the call of spring, and new growth; the sort of churning feeling in the legs I used to get as a child trying to fall asleep. My mom always reassured me, telling me they were growing pains.

I hope that's still true, that this churning is growing pains, and that something new will emerge from it. And suddenly, as I write, The Second Coming, that Yeats poem, rears its head again:

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?