The Hint of the Century

When we were kids, today, Ash Wednesday was a somber and sobering block on the kitchen calendar that marked the start of Lent.

I dreaded it growing up, the ceremony and circumstance that went with it. The burning of the palm from Palm Sunday to create the ashes the priest places on your forehead in the sign of the cross with his thumb and forefinger, 'remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return.' When you’ve nine years old, you don’t appreciate (or comprehend) reminders about your own mortality (and when you’re sixty-nine, you’re not fond of them either).

What I remember most about Ash Wednesday is Gary J from beyond where we lived on Bloomfield Avenue, down Appleman near Castleton. We were all kids playing ball out in the street near his house on a surprisingly warm Ash Wednesday and he was (I think) just about the only kid with a clean forehead. I knew, instinctively this meant he wasn't a Catholic.

In street baseball, you only need two outfielders (unless we ever got to play on the Turnpike up at Exit Ten where it's six lanes wide; that would have been sweet!). Standing out there alongside of me he had (too many) questions about those ashes and our foreheads and I certainly didn't have answers. After all, what was I, the Pope?

Gary didn't understand the significance, the timing or the whole idea behind Lent and its importance to all the kids he hung out with after school (but never saw during school). Having no special insights into the articles of my own faith, I reassured him as best I could by telling him to not worry too much about any of it because I was sure it would get it would get better when we were grown up. I truly believe I meant that, and I wish I knew how to find now the certainty and reassurance I felt then.

It's been decades since I sacrificed for Lent (truth to tell, I failed my faith and gave up Lent but then kept on living) and I've rationalized my failure by telling myself that since I always went back to whatever I gave up (usually something to eat as opposed to a behavior change), I hadn't really changed at all, so my surrender cost nothing because it was worth nothing.

And then I look around me, and see where we are and where I am in the midst of all of that and realize I didn't run backward or stop running at all in order to be here (nor did any of us) but rather, just ran a step slower, a step less resolute, perhaps a shorter footfall until the distance grew inexorably between where we wanted to be (and knew we had to go) and where we were to end up, so far behind we could no longer see those up ahead.

And when the distance between us was too great to ever fill, we stopped and have forgotten how to start again. This makes all of the days between now and Easter more important as part of a beginning than as part of a continuum because at the root of that Paschal triumph is the human try. 
-bill kenny