This week we enter Lent. So, I offer you the words of others. First, an ode to Mardis Gras:
“We shall have mead, we shall have wine, we shall have feast. We shall have sweetness and milk, honey and milk, wholesome ambrosia, abundance of that, abundance of that. We shall have harp, we shall have lute, we shall have horn. We shall have sweet psaltery of the melodious strings and the regal lyre, of the songs we shall have, of the songs we shall have. And the king of Kings, and Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of peace, and of grace be with us, of grace be with us.”—Celtic Blessing on Ash Eve.
“One will have to give account in the judgment day of every good thing which one might have enjoyed and did not.”--- the Talmud. “And let this feeble body fail, and let it faint and die; my souls shall quit this mournful vail, and soar to worlds on high. Give joy or grief, give ease or pain, take life or friends away; But let me find them all again, in that eternal day. And I’ll sing halleluiah, and you’ll sing halleluiah, and we’ll all sing halleluiah, when we arrive at home.”--- The Social Harp. And Ash Wednesday: “You thumbed grit into my furrowed brow, marking me with the sign of mortality, the dust of last year’s palms. The cross you traced seared, smudged skin, and I recalled other ashes etched in my heart by those who loved too little or not at all.” --- Elizabeth-Anne Vanek. “In some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfaction. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.”---Thomas Merton.
Prayer, fasting, and charitable giving. These are the outward signs of an inward truth. We are utterly and permanently dependent upon others for sustenance. In the beginning and the end, life depends on God.
