I was so consumed with pushing clocks forward last Saturday night/Sunday morning (total lie: I spent a not inconsiderable time moving clocks forward on Sunday after I'd gotten up, having set my bedroom clock forward and there's always one I miss-the clock in the a car. In our house my wife handles all time measurement.) that I lost sight of the fact that it was the First Sunday of Lent.
Ash Wednesday came and went and let no mark (pun intended) though I did pause to remember with some nostalgia the comfort, in retrospect, I took from being a loyal son of Holy Mother Church. As you've surely realized no later than the past tense of the verb in the preceding sentence, I am a fallen away Roman Catholic.
No rant and not even an Apostate's Screed (I am rather proud of that one) just a sense of regret over the hole in what may have been my soul when, from a very limited perspective on life on Earth (my point of view), I decided God and I should see other people.
To be honest, when I was a practicing Catholic, I wasn't kidding anyone. I was never going to turn pro and knew it, only moments after everyone else did. Moving from a public elementary school to a parochial one, and crawling from the wreckage of that encounter fixed me. I suspect the Sisters of Charity who had toiled without surcease but also with little success were probably not upset when our paths diverged after graduation.
When I came across this article I smiled in a fashion approximating what "wanly" might look like though I have been accused at times of smirking. I'm not sure if that were indeed what I were doing if that would be a venal sin and where on the scale it would go, but I have no doubt someone, somewhere tracks all of this.
On a day whose date I will never know, I'll have an opportunity to discover Nelson's not the only mandela in the universe and learn the difference between dharma and karma, but it could be distinction without difference and that was just a dream.
-bill kenny
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