Ash Wednesday 2004

Mar­di Gras is over and now that Lent begins it is time to repent for all the crass, vul­gar, indul­gent and legion oth­er sin­ful things that I have done since last Lent. I won­der if forty days is long enough. More than the long stretch of Ordi­nary Time dur­ing the sum­mer, more even than Advent and, masochis­tic as it sounds, I like Lent. It is a time for sack­cloth and ash­es, rec­og­niz­ing mor­tal­i­ty and attempts to whit­tle away at imper­fec­tion. Since I tend to spend most of the year in a state sim­i­lar to this, Lent is a nat­ur­al favorite. So, I am sup­posed to sac­ri­fice some­thing for the forty days and I am sup­posed to strive to improve some­thing. This is sup­posed to make me a bet­ter per­son, and what it boils down to is dis­ci­pline. If I have the grit to hold on to what I am work­ing on and the gump­tion to deny myself some sort of plea­sure then I should end up stronger. [pos­si­bly more annoy­ing to peo­ple, but that is there prob­lem].

This Lent I am giv­ing up sweet­meats, can­dies, pas­tries [not muffins though] and most impor­tant­ly, choco­late. If I want some­thing sweet, fruit will do. I am going to improve my patience [espe­cial­ly while dri­ving], which has been in rel­a­tive short sup­ply since my time in NYC] and to admit when I am wrong, or igno­rant on some top­ic. [this will be hard because I nev­er know what I am talk­ing about].

So I’m walk­ing around today with a smudge mark on my head. Some­one told me I look like I’ve been punched. I’m also fast­ing. No meat. I had a bowl of oat­meal for break­fast and will have mac­a­roni and cheese for din­ner. I might put some tuna and some veg­gies into the mac­a­roni as well. Even though Fish on Fri­days [and Ash Wednes­day] was ini­tial­ly start­ed to feed poor fish­er­men, I feel that it is use­ful still. Now it is anoth­er sac­ri­fice that is a reminder of the sac­ri­fice that Lent cul­mi­nates in.

Many of the peo­ple bitch­ing about The Pas­sion of the Christ, which opens today, com­plain that it is vio­lent or anti-Semit­ic or his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate or blah blah blah. Well, it is sup­posed to be vio­lent, it is about the arrest, tor­ture and cru­ci­fix­ion of a per­son. As for anti-Semi­tism, there might be sub­tleties that I am unaware of [not hav­ing seen the film] but peo­ple who com­plain that it makes the Jews seem respon­si­ble for killing Jesus are fools. Jews and Romans or Romans and Jews if you don’t like the order of the billing, were there. The type of peo­ple that killed Jesus isn’t the point, that peo­ple killed Jesus is the point. The fact that it opens on Ash Wednes­day, when the Church enters a time of repen­tence and recog­ni­tion of mor­tal­i­ty [Remem­ber you are dust, and to dust you shall return] is no coin­ci­dence. Humans suf­fer and die. Jesus, a human, suf­fered and died. Oth­er humans did this to him. I was taught that Jesus went through the tor­ture and indig­ni­ty and cru­ci­fix­ion will­ing­ly, for human­i­ty. I real­ly have no desire to see The Pas­sion of the Christ, I have not seen any Mel Gib­son inter­views [since I don’t have cable] but I think the point of his film is to make us aware just how much was sac­ri­ficed. I don’t talk about reli­gion often because it makes me sounds like a fanat­ic instead of just a lunatic. If you are still with me I am sur­prised.

13 thoughts on “Ash Wednesday 2004”

  1. I think the issue with the “Pas­sion of the Christ” movie is that it brings up some latent anti-Semi­tism in cer­tain believ­ers in Chris­tian­i­ty, whether it means to or not (and hav­ing nev­er even seen a pre­view for it, I would­n’t’ judge). Quick pref­ace, as I don’t think you know: I’m a ex-catholic athe­ist, who has read the bible (as an athe­ist, not as a catholic). The idea that I’ve heard is that, in short terms: “The Jews killed Christ. Jews bad, Christ good”, which, in my opin­ion, is com­plete rub­bish, con­sid­er­ing that well…Jesus was not a Chris­t­ian (that would be kind of pompous, don’t you think? 😉 And by his mater­nal line being Jew­ish, he was a Jew him­self. Add that to the fact that the cru­ci­fix­ion of Christ exists as one of the “great” moments in Chris­t­ian his­to­ry. After all, it was through his death that Chris­tians were sup­posed to achieve for­give­ness and sal­va­tion. Slap in that, in fact, the Romans killed Christ, then I don’t see what the deal is. I mean, it does­n’t seem to be what you believe, many peo­ple in the town I grew up in did though (well, they also ran the few black fam­i­lies who moved into town out..but any­ways..), so it’s a sub­ject I tend to spout about.

    I always thought the smudge mark was kind of icky. Our church used too much oil.

  2. i’m with ya Patrick.

    and it sounds like you grew up in the same kind of town I did. Fun­da­men­tal­ists used to hand me brochures telling me that I was going to hell because I was Catholic. I had quite the col­lec­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I don’t think I have them any longer.

  3. I’ll prob­a­bly see the movie, most­ly so I can speak about the sub­ject intell­gent­ly. I don’t think it is right to crit­i­cize some­thing you haven’t seen. Some tid­bits that are caus­ing some of the stir:
    Mel Gib­son is Catholic, but not Roman Catholic. The church to which his father (and he, I think) belongs no longer rec­og­nizes the papa­cy. This came about before the sec­ond Vat­i­can coun­cil. This splin­ter catholic group believes that the sec­ond Vat­i­can was a con­spir­a­cy between the Jews and the Masons to take con­trol of the church, so I guess that is where the Anti-semi­te cries are com­ing from.

    I am dis­trubed by the fact that peo­ple talk about tak­ing their kids to see this. This com­ing from fam­i­lies that won’t let their kids see PG-13 movies until the kid is over 13. They also com­plain about vio­lence in movies. Some of the groups protest­ing this movie sup­port the show­ing of oth­er vio­lent movies. So you have the Chris­t­ian Con­ser­v­a­tive groups for tak­ing the fam­i­ly to see an admit­ed­ly vio­lent movie and you have some very lib­er­al groups cry­ing foul. Next thing you know I’ll get hit upside the head by a fly­ing pig.

  4. i sup­pose that i should add that i intend to keep my improve­ments [if suc­cess­ful] even after Lent is over.

    i’m gonna go back to eat­ing toothrot­ting stuff though. yeah, boy.

  5. that is hard­core. i try not to wor­ry about life after death and all that. it is hard enough mak­ing sure i am liv­ing well right-here-right-now.

    i’m sure Catholic fast­ing was like that back in the day, but now since every­thing is about ‘feel­ing good’ about reli­gion things have changed.

    the reminder that came with the ash­es this morn­ing was feel-good too. Noth­ing in your face like ‘Remem­ber you are dust…’ Instead it was some­thing like ‘Repent and rejoice in the Lord.’

    Yeah. what does THAT mean?

  6. I guess it means that God is no longer wrathy? Did Jesus take away the smite but­ton? If so can I have it? I have a long list of peo­ple who could use a bit of smit­ing(?).

  7. Ooo, I could real­ly use a smite but­ton right now. Though I do agree with jmay though, that peo­ple should­n’t take chil­dren to this movie. From what I have heard, it is extreme­ly grue­some, which per­haps it should be in order to show the suf­fer­ing that took place, but I would be very con­cerned about the Fun­da­men­tal­ist par­ents bring­ing young chil­dren who will prob­a­bly not real­ly appre­ci­ate what is going on his­tor­i­cal­ly and see the movie more con­cerned with gore than the mes­sage. I sup­pose I will just have to wait and see the film, how­ev­er, before I make a final judge­ment call.

  8. dammit. i just real­ized today’s my first day with no robot-lovin’. *sigh* damn you, lent.

  9. Where did you grow up? Judg­ing by the com­ment on fun­da­men­tal­ists, and the anti rebel flag bumper stick­ers you men­tioned on Lau­ren’s blog, I’d say you have to be from the South. There was one Catholic church in all of Durham that I knew of, and it was about as com­mon a denom­i­na­tion as Mor­mons and 7th Day Adven­tists. Tons of Bap­tists tho.

  10. We have a Pres­i­dent propos­ing a nation­wide ban on homo­sex­u­al mar­riages (which thank­ful­ly will nev­er see the light of day) and a bunch of oth­er peo­ple com­plain­ing of anti-semi­tism where none exists. Boy, am I proud to be asso­ci­at­ed with a coun­try full of these dum­b­ass­es.

  11. Fun­ny sto­ry about reli­gion and aton­ing for sins. Dur­ing Yom Kip­pur, you atone for your sins and ensure that you are writ­ten into the book of life for the fol­low­ing year. When you fast you’re not even sup­posed to have water. When my mom was lit­tle, she was ter­ri­fied that if she swal­lowed a lit­tle water when she brushed her teeth that she would have failed and would not be writ­ten in the book of life.

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