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Ashes

Ashes

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I began Lent by returning my overdue library book (see below … additional venial sin averted!) and receiving ashes. To accomplish the latter, I reached my parish church by 6:33 a.m. (the service having already begun, of course) and found the parking lot almost full. Wind chills today are in the teens but that doesn’t stop Catholics from their appointed rounds.

Back on the road to Metro before 7:00 a.m., I noticed that my church wasn’t the only one offering predawn distribution. Cars were leaving the Methodist church, too.

But the greatest surprise came at the Crystal City Metro. I usually avoid that station these days, having found a bus that leaves from another Metro stop that gets me to the office more quickly. But today I opted for Metro all the way because it was warmer.

As I was scrambling up the escalator into the usual crowd of buskers and hawkers, I spotted a man in purple off to my left. He was bearded, smiling and … wearing vestments. It was a priest giving out ashes!

Guess I would have gotten them today one way or the other.

A Day, a Diary

A Day, a Diary

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I found an old journal in the back room of my parents’ old house, my grandfather Cassidy’s diary from 1940. This is my father’s father, who I never knew; he died before I was born. He was a Nazarene preacher, and much of this diary records his prayer habits and the texts he preached from.

On this day, 78 years ago, the tent was in or near Clinton, Illinois, and his sermon came from 2 Samuel 25-28:

“I pray you, forgive the trespass of your handmaid: for the Lord will certainly make my lord an enduring house; because my lord fights the battles of the Lord, and evil has not been found in you all your days.”

Many days began with reading and praying. There were walks, helping friends cut wood, marveling at the beauty of the day.

My grandfather followed his calling even though his family, my father then a young man, were far away. I’m not sure what they lived on, how they made it. But somehow, they did.

The world is a different place now, but the pages in this diary are as crisp and clear as the day he wrote them. At the bottom of each page, a quotation. This one is from Emerson: “Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds.”

Singing with Dad

Singing with Dad

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Sunday was the nativity of John the Baptist, a feast I don’t ever recall celebrating before. Something new in the liturgy? One of those days you notice every few years, when it falls on a Sunday?

We sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” a hymn I always associate with summer tent revivals — and not one of my favorites. To me, it sounds “Protestant”— a non-ecumenical term to be sure but the only one I can come up with. It’s not the kind of hymn I sang as a kid, one with verses in Latin. Singing it has always made me feel a bit strange and out of place.

But now I have an antidote for hymns like “Shall We Gather” or “How Great Thou Art.” Whenever we sing them now, I imagine Dad standing next to me, belting out the melody in his rich baritone. Dad was the Protestant in my life. He went to tent revivals and Wednesday night services as a kid. He knew the score.

So I follow his lead, sing out loud and strong. I can almost feel him nudge my elbow. “See, Annie,” he winks. “That’s not too bad, is it?”

The Sacred and the Profane

The Sacred and the Profane

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I snapped this photo on a walk around Nagarkot, the hill town on the cusp of the Himalayas. It speaks to me, summarizes the way Nepal combines spirituality and chaos, how it mushes up prayer life and real life until you can’t really tell the difference.

And isn’t that how it should be?

I looked up “sacred and profane” not really knowing the origin of this dichotomy, and learned that it’s attributed to the French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Sacred things are those forbidden and set apart; they represent the interests of the group. Profane things are individual interests, more mundane concerns.

While Durkheim believed that all religions contain this dichotomy, other scholars disagree. It’s a western way of looking at faith, they say.

After visiting the temples and stupas, seeing the Ganesh statues in taxis, and of course, the prayer flags … I would agree with those who disagree with Durkheim.

Easter Monday

Easter Monday

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Easter has its own rhythm, different from Christmas or Thanksgiving. Church comes first.

Yesterday, through some miracle of timing, Suzanne arrived only minutes after we did, which meant she could park her ambrosia salad, backpack, running tights and jogging shoes in the car and slide into the seat we saved in the big sanctuary.

The sermon was more honest than others I recall. It was as if the priest was trying to convince himself of the significance of the empty tomb. His conclusion: there must be something to it, because of all the good people we know who are gone, and because of the incompleteness of life.

A cynic — heck, even a realist — could easily counter these arguments. Of course, there are good people in the world, but that doesn’t mean there’s a God and an afterlife. As for incompleteness, that’s why we have irony.

But I was touched at the honest homily. The priest is one I’ve seen for years, and he looked noticeably older this year, walked with a cane. Maybe he’s working out some things in his own mind. Whatever the case, I appreciated his candor.

In the end, he said, it all comes down to faith.

And so it does.


(Detail from the Cambodian monastery at Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha)

Last Sunday

Last Sunday

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Tomorrow is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, the feast of Christ the King. Christ the King was the name of my church and school growing up. A little pre-fab building where I made my First Communion and was confirmed and, when I was in eighth grade, was required to go to daily mass and sing at funerals.

I regret to say that we often whispered and giggled and otherwise acted as 13-year-olds do at some of those solemn occasions. It’s something I’ve thought about through the years, the difference between then and now, when such a requirement might be considered too traumatizing. But mostly I’ve thought how traumatizing we might have been for the mourners. A flock of girls in green-and-gray plaid skirts with beanies on their heads and bow ties clipped onto their white blouses. Or maybe we were a hopeful sign, proof that life goes on.

In my last year of parochial school, the little church of Christ the King became the ornate Cathedral of Christ the King. It was a massive church with ornate lights and grillwork and the theme of kingship. One boring mass my friend Linda Welch counted every crown in the place. There were more than 100, if I recall.

Grace, Visible

Grace, Visible

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It was early and I was walking, lost in thought, lost in sad thought if you want to know the truth. I looked up and saw a shaft of light piercing the shaggy tunnel of green that this stretch of Folkstone Drive has become.

There it was, brightness distilled and condensed, channeled from the heavens to the earth. Usually we can’t see sunshine because it’s all around us, a blessing we tend to ignore. But when it slants through the greenery as it did this morning, it reminds us of its presence. It comforts, inspires and motivates.

When I was young I used to think that grace consisted of the dust motes that floated through air. I’d heard that grace was invisible but all around us, and dust particles fit the bill. Today’s light shaft is a better candidate. It was, at least for me at that moment, grace visible.

Dispensation

Dispensation

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This year the Bishop of Arlington has granted the diocese a dispensation from the usual Lenten Friday abstinence from meat so that Irish Catholics can enjoy their corned beef. There’s a slight catch. You’re supposed to undertake a work of charity or act of comparable penance some other time to make up for it.

Fair enough. But it’s one of those cringe-worthy Catholic moments. Will we really be judged on such details? Yes, obedience is important, but what about the spirit of the law?

I think I’ll forego meat just for the heck of it. But the Bailey’s — I’ll have a sip of that, thank you very much!

(Photo: allrecipes.com)

Life Without Chocolate

Life Without Chocolate

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Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a day I’m embarrassed to say I often dread because for me it’s usually the first of 40 days without chocolate. There have even been years when it’s been the first of 40 days without sweets — a practice so difficult and fraught with deliberation (is granola a sweet? how about Irish soda bread?) as to render most spiritual gains irrelevant.

The trick, of course, is to deprive one’s self for a higher purpose —and not so radically that the deprivation becomes an end in itself.

I think this is possible. I really do. But there are always moments — usually at the end of a long day when a handful of peanut M&Ms would taste mighty nice — when it begins to seem more stultifying than edifying.

Still, like anything else, it gets easier with practice. Usually by Easter I feel like I could live the rest of my life without chocolate.

Of course, I never do.

Photo: Wikipedia

A Preview

A Preview

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The witch hazel is an early bird. I’ve seen it bloom when there’s snow on the ground. No surprise that it’s erupted in yellow blooms these winter-spring days.

Looking at the witch hazel, being outdoors over the weekend, with the plants stirring and the birds singing — it’s enough to bring on a bad case of spring fever. Or at least to make us ask, Is this it? Is it really spring?

Of course we have some cold, gray days ahead, but in late February one can hope.

I guess the best way to think about this unseasonable warmth is is as a preview, a glimpse of what lies ahead.

Religious imagery is not always what comes to mind first with me, but for some reason I’m thinking about the Transfiguration of Jesus, when he appeared to his apostles all radiant and glowing from within. That, too, was a preview, a taste of the beyond.

Which is all to say that a preview asks us to see and appreciate, not grasp and pin down.