Feeling cautiously groovy

Can you feel the spring in the air? Does 70 degrees and broad daylight after 6:30 p.m. make you want to roll up your sleeves and plunge your fingers into some nice, loamy, sun-roasted soil?

It does me. I had my annual spring cold last week, but when there’s a hint of moisture on the breeze in April, I just feel too good to feel bad.

Is there any doubt about why the early Catholic Church chose to have Easter in the springtime? Let’s just say that if there’s a time of year for symbolic rebirth, it is now.

At any rate, Holy Week is the inspiration for this week’s cover story. We’ve often done a religious cover story this time of the year. Usually we do a story that emphasizes the diversity of religions in the Truckee Meadows, but this year, we wanted to illuminate some of the facets that religions have in common. Frankly, there are a lot of things about this enclave of religious women, the Carmelite sisters, which could be said about many religions.

Still, I think sweeping generalizations about the similarities of religions would probably ring a little hollow given the state of the world today. In fact, while I believe that wars tend to spur people toward spiritual pursuits, I don’t believe wars—particularly this war—tend to promote religious tolerance.

How does the exact same event promote a desire toward spirituality and religious intolerance?

But in the meantime, today I saw two boys sitting on the new grass on a small hill. From a distance, it appeared that one was attempting to teach the other how to whistle. When you get right on down to the nitty gritty, it’s a lot harder to be sad when the forsythia are in bloom.