Ashes to ashes, snow to mud

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. It's also Ash Wednesday. The last time that happened was in 1945. The two dates also overlapped in 1923 and 1934 and will coincide again in 2024 and 2029, according to the UK Express. This timing sequence helps explain why I don't remember it ever happening before.

Valentine's Day, Ash Wednesday--is your heart in it?

Photo by J. Harrington

Since tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, today must be Shrove, or Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras). Although we haven't been particularly religious for years. this year we're seriously considering "giving up" Twitter, or politics, or both, for Lent, as a form of self-denial. In addition, we think for the next six or so weeks, we'll focus on the Spirituality of Fly Fishing and Poetry as a Spiritual Practice. Instead of just foregoing anything as a form of penance, we'll take a positive stance toward substituting spiritual growth for political grumblings. Maybe we'll even make time to finally read Pope Francis' encyclical LAUDATO SI’, on Care for Our Common Home.

For some time now we've been fussing and fuming about our perceived need for the Democrats to offer more than a "at least we're not as bad as the Republicans" strategy. We'd like to see a much more positive approach take the place of opposing the stupid, evil proposals and actions emanating from the GOP controlled White House and Congress. IN the interest of following Ghandi's advice to "be the change you want to see in the world," at least for this Lenten season we will be more positive about what we do want and how we think we might be able to get it. Based on our experience to date, that will require a certain amount of spiritual growth across the board. Wo knows, we may even experience the miracle of a return of warmth by the time Easter has arrived on April 1. For now, we'll leave that alone.

       Draw Near

        By Scott Cairns 

              προσέλθετε

For near is where you’ll meet what you have wandered

far to find. And near is where you’ll very likely see

how far the near obtains. In the dark katholikon

the lighted candles lent their gold to give the eye

a more than common sense of what lay flickering

just beyond the ken, and lent the mind a likely

swoon just shy of apprehension. It was then

that time’s neat artifice fell in and made for us

a figure for when time would slip free altogether.

I have no sense of what this means to you, so little

sense of what to make of it myself, save one lit glimpse

of how we live and move, a more expansive sense in Whom.

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