HAPPY FAT TUESDAY PEOPLE!

HOPE YOU STUFF YOURSELVES SILLY!

"EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY, FOR TOMORROW WE'll DIE!"
Dave Matthews Band

Well, we actually die to ourselves so that we are aware of our mortality...focusing us even more to the shadow of the cross we stand in. What really needs to die is my own ego, the self, the privilege of living as an arrogant American christian. Wearing that humiliating mark, that symbol of death on my forehead reminds me that the cross does not allow me to live as I want to live: in comfort, indifference, regret, shame, or futility. My life exists always in the tension between the shadow of the cross and the emptiness of the tomb. My life is convicted by the sacrifice of who hung on that cross as it rejoices in the departure of who defeated death out of a tomb. My life needs this journey, this 40 day trek, to penitentially see just how much damage I have created between how I live and how God wants me to live.

I always live in this frustration with me and God. This time of the year asks that I be honest with that life, and that I try to see the mortal nature of who I am in comparison to the eternal nature of who I want to be, who I am training myself to be, who I am trying to become. That I try to live in bringing the kingdom of God here and now, as opposed to looking forward to it, sometime when I die. That's true, but if all I am doing is taking up space on this planet and waiting for my great reward in some far off distant gated community where God lives, my life is nothing but an excuse, or maybe a series of excuses made to make me feel better about how I live, and not how God keeps insisting I am invited to live.

This Ash Wednesday for me, is about sitting in the ancient tradition of sackcloth and ashes, mourning and grieving the death of who I am, who I pride myself to be, who I arrogantly put myself out there as, and who I want to be applauded for being. This Ash Wednesday is about coming back to feeling the breath of God breathe into me, new life. A new life in which helps me be connective to others, pointing to them the breath of God filling their lives, bringing them back to life. This new life liberates me from being attached to my self-serving devices. What a way to live! More later...