“I can think about Advent, about expectancy.  It holds some concerns, but to be impregnated with new life is a rather hopeful subject.  During Advent we rejoice as we open ourselves to the mysteries of the marriage of heaven to earth.

But in Lent we come to know that the only way to our own healing and wholeness comes paradoxically through dismembering–an appallingly painful process which life offers us, ready or not, and which Lent gives us the form and meaning for.  “They have pierced my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones,”  We engage dismemberment and atonement so that we maybe transformed through the Easter mysteries and arrive at “at-one-ment.”

-Gertrud Mueller Nelson, “To Dance with God”