Ash Wednesday - Lent

 

Today is Ash Wednesday.  It is an important time for reflection and atonement for me.  But, first, some basic bullet points:

• I am beyond overjoyed and relieved that my dog is back to her old self and is feeling fully up to snuff!
• I ran 13.1 miles (~21.1km) this morning to complete my 1/2 Marathon Run for March.  
• I had a really enjoyable day teaching.  In the lab class I was having the students explore early avian embryology using chicken eggs.  In one of the lectures, I was discussing some of the biochemical factors guiding organogenesis in vertebrates.  And in my other lecture today, I was discussing and describing the role of the vaginocervical orgasm in helping to draw spermatozoa through the cervix towards the entryway into the Fallopian tube to promote successful fertilization.  

After I leave the U today, my wife and I are going to attend evening Ash Wednesday Mass.  Even though I realize I am a terrible and unworthy person who does many wrong things in life, I find significant comfort that within the focus I can more easily muster through participating in a Lenten journey.... I can try to work to become the nicer, kinder, more gentle and more loving person I SHOULD be, but so very frequently fail to be.  

In terms of my primary Lenten vow for this season:  I believe I need to focus once again on forgiving the two folks who hurt me.  I believe I SHOULD be able to forgive them, and in so doing, move beyond the anger that still will bubble up in me regarding my experiences with them.  I NEED to become able to forgive them.  I think it is my primary call this season to establish in me.  

I have some additional secondary vows I am also thinking I need to adopt as well.  I have to think through them more before I can successfully describe them here.  

I know I have the comic somewhere.... I cut a copy of it from our Diocesan weekly newspaper perhaps 35 years ago.  It is a gentle comic of kids playing.... and because this was a Catholic focused newspaper near the start of Lent..... the kids were playing a form of "dress up" where they were imitating Ash Wednesday Mass.  I remember the humor and delight I had saw in the comic when I realized that the young kid who was being the "priest" at this "play Mass" was using one of his Dad's neckties as an artful facsimile of of the priest's vestment stole.  And, here is the rub (pun intended).... the kid "priest" was distributing ashes to the other kids (who were being "parishioners") .  His vessel containing the ashes he used.... was one of his father's pipes... specifically the vessel was the bowl of the pipe containing the spent pipe tobacco ashes being used as the "play" ashes for their "pretend mass".  

I have always found that comic delightful in so many ways.  I wish I had found it this morning when I looked.  It may sound silly or uninspired in some ways.  But to a Catholic pipe smoking fellow, it has always tickled my humor. 

PipeTobacco