Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Caucus, Groundhog, Primary, Pancakes, Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down. It is the beginning of a new month, what looks like a busy month, a month of changes. I start off with “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit”, the old invocation from childhood for a good month.

There are many hoping this will be a good month for them. This evening are the Iowa Caucuses, where our political landscape will, perhaps, become a little bit clearer. I’m not involved. It is a strange year for politics.

Tuesday is Groundhog’s day. What will we be repeating, over and over again this year? Will the groundhog see his shadow cast by all the television lights? What sort of shadow will the candidates see after the caucuses? Perhaps that is part of what will get repeated and repeated. Will it be two weeks or six weeks of additional political spectacle?

Of course, Tuesday is also the Feast of the Presentation, also known as Candlemas. This year, Easter comes early, which means Lent starts early, a week and a day after Candlemas. Next Tuesday, is the day before Lent starts. A time to clean out the cupboards and use up meat and lard before a season of fasting begins. It is a time for pancakes and carnival.

Then, the next day, we start our fasting, having ashes placed on our heads to remind us of our own mortality. Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down. On Saturday, I went to a memorial service for an old friend from Church who passed away during the most recent superstorm. I think back to the passing of my mother, a little over three years ago, during another storm. Storms and major life changes. I think of my daughter Miranda, named after Prospero’s daughter, and wonder what other tempests I have to face.

Perhaps, I should listen to more poems about wrecks, the Hesperus, the Deutschland, the Edmund Fitzgerald.