Ash Wednesday

Hugo and I attended an Ash Wednesday service this evening to receive the imposition of ashes. It marks the beginning of my preparation for Easter. The priest's sermon had a quite vivid bit near the beginning about how our bodies, and our possessions, and our political world, and everything that now seems so significant to us will eventually end and pass away. From there she worked her way over to Isaiah 58, about the fast the Lord asks of us being to deal our bread to the hungry, etc. Afterward, as he did last year, Hugo took ashes over to our Mexican barber, who may have to move away soon because of the economic crisis. Not to get literal about things, but we also took him a loaf of French bread—we'd bought two for the price of one at the grocery store on the way home.

I've chosen two Lenten disciplines. One is to spend the first 5 minutes of every day with God, even before walking the dog, which is normally the first chore demanding my attention. The second is not to allow myself to throw angry thoughts at people inside my head. I adopted a similar discipline for Advent a few years back—there's a recurring need for it.

Tangential association: Our lives have felt a little bit monastic or Lenten lately by force of circumstance. Because of a complicated water heater failure, we haven't had hot water for a couple days now, and there's no telling when it'll be back. We've been bathing with buckets and stove-heated water. It reminds me of my mission, except Februraries didn't get as frigid in the Dominican Republic. If I weren't so First-World pampered, I really ought to be bathing that way routinely—it saves a lot of water.