Ash Wednesday

A parishioner wrote to Fr. Joseph and me and asked how we personally observe Ash Wednesday. Here is what I wrote back:

One thing I always do is take Ash Wednesday off from work. I try to use the day as a day of reflection. The words that are traditionally used when ashes are placed on Christians' heads are "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return", and it is a day to reflect on our mortality, and where our life is going, in the knowledge that, sooner or later, it is going to end. It is easy to become so busy that we don't take the time to stop and think about the larger picture in our life (and being clergy, it is easy for me to even become too busy with church to do this!) , and Lent in general and Ash Wednesday in particular, gives us that opportunity to do that.

Often, funerals are a time when people, in the shock of grief, and realization that since life is short, they are not necessarily living as they wish they were. It might be helpful to think of Ash Wednesday as our own "funeral", where we come face to face with our mortality, mourn it, and come to terms with how it will affect our living. Of course, baptism is our "dying with Christ so that we might rise with Christ", and Lent was traditionally the time of preparation for baptism, ending in the Three Days when we celebrate Christ's death and resurrection. So as we contemplate our deaths on Ash Wednesday, we also look forward to the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ at Easter, which is a promise of our own resurrection.

A good night's sleep

I came home yesterday morning from Kent Regency Rehab. I had not slept well since the surgery. At rehab, I would just doze off, and in would come someone for blood work or my vital signs. Last night, sleeping in my own bed with my husband was therapeutic in and of itself. For the first time I could comfortably sleep on my left and right sides--which I like to do.

This morning the visiting nurse came and opened my case. She declared me "perfect," the easiest case she's ever opened. She could not believe the shape I'm in. "But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15:57).

The pain is negligible and I am looking forward to getting caught up on everything.

Friday Cat-Blogging -- February 1, 2008

I have a momentous announcement to make -- tomorrow, I will be adopting two six-year old cats, Charles and Allie (although they may be given additional names in due course). I will be posting photos of them once I have them, but in the meantime, in honor of their imminent arrival and in honor of St. Ignatius of Antioch whose feast those of us using the traditional Western calendar celebrate today, I offer this icon of cats:

(Don't they look more like they're playing than like they're attacking and eating good St. Ignatius?)