An inappropriate Lent?

I am excited about Lent this year. I have enjoyed creating liturgies and thinking of symbols that might aid our journey. Excitement doesn't feel like a seemly emotion for this particular season. Or is it? Lent begins with putting ash on our foreheads, reminding ourselves of our humble beginnings and similarly humble endings. But there is much life to be celebrated in between. Lent also involves, in some traditions, putting away the alleluias - something unthinkable in other traditions! But does that mean that we cannot yet celebrate? There are plenty of other words just as uplifting as alleluia!
These symbols are just that - symbols. They help us mark the movement through the liturgical year. They don't straitjacket us into feeling or thinking a particular way. Indeed the familiarity of some of the symbols of our faith and worship should free us to be aware of new things that God reveals to us. And if God is leading us in exciting paths, our response has to be in step. God is not bowed down by our traditions, so why should we be?
May Lent be a time when even tradition cannot stop the mischievous bubbling up of God's Spirit in you.