Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Ash Wednesday
I went to the service this morning and a few thoughts about mortality came to mind.
Mortality is the price we pay for Life
Religion is pyschotherapy to help us come to grips with our eventual death.
I have always disliked Lent because of the focus on our negative aspects, but I have always appreciated the bleakness of Good Friday and the Light of the Vigil. There is a time and place for everything and the time to look at what is wrong with our lives is during Lent. It is a time for purification and healing and remorse.
Lent does not have to be the forty days before Easter. My best friend has done several '40 days' in the last few years. He gave up swearing for 40 days and hardly swears at all now, in fact, I feel a ping of guilt when I use foul language around him. He gave up television and movies, which took up a great deal of his leisure time, for 40 days and now he has a better persepective on the curse of the glowing box. He does not follow liturgical calendars, but he knows about them. I don't know if this gives him greater freedom to observe Lent any time of the year or not.
I also was imposed with the Ashes, as I am every year. When I was a child we went to a service early in the morning, and Mom always let us wash the ashes off of our faces before we went to school. I am not washing the ashes off as an adult. I do wonder about the reading for the day, which is Matthew 6:1-6, where Jesus tells us to pray in private and not pray or fast in public as the hypocrites do. Yet I walk around with ashes on my forehead. My friend thought that it was an inky thumbprint at first, but he remembered what day it is. I am also walking around a Catholic University and I see several people around me who have very dark, very bold ashes on their foreheads, so I don't think I'm out of place. Ah, tis interesting. ¶ 1:28 PM
Mortality is the price we pay for Life
Religion is pyschotherapy to help us come to grips with our eventual death.
I have always disliked Lent because of the focus on our negative aspects, but I have always appreciated the bleakness of Good Friday and the Light of the Vigil. There is a time and place for everything and the time to look at what is wrong with our lives is during Lent. It is a time for purification and healing and remorse.
Lent does not have to be the forty days before Easter. My best friend has done several '40 days' in the last few years. He gave up swearing for 40 days and hardly swears at all now, in fact, I feel a ping of guilt when I use foul language around him. He gave up television and movies, which took up a great deal of his leisure time, for 40 days and now he has a better persepective on the curse of the glowing box. He does not follow liturgical calendars, but he knows about them. I don't know if this gives him greater freedom to observe Lent any time of the year or not.
I also was imposed with the Ashes, as I am every year. When I was a child we went to a service early in the morning, and Mom always let us wash the ashes off of our faces before we went to school. I am not washing the ashes off as an adult. I do wonder about the reading for the day, which is Matthew 6:1-6, where Jesus tells us to pray in private and not pray or fast in public as the hypocrites do. Yet I walk around with ashes on my forehead. My friend thought that it was an inky thumbprint at first, but he remembered what day it is. I am also walking around a Catholic University and I see several people around me who have very dark, very bold ashes on their foreheads, so I don't think I'm out of place. Ah, tis interesting. ¶ 1:28 PM
