Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. It's easy for me to say, but the other two issues of note this February 14 - Valentine's Day and the opening of baseball spring training - pale next to that. It's time to ready ourselves to become better people.

No matter how good we already are, there's always room for improvement. I don't think we should beat ourselves up, but we must never forget the value of self review nor the lessons of regret. This is the time to think all that out. 

Read good books and articles. Reflect on what you should and should not have done, honestly and perhaps a little brutally, despite what I just said. See God in everyone you meet. Just maybe that will help them to see God in you.

Ash Wednesday 2022

Lent begins today for a world which didn't feel so dangerous a scant few days ago as it does this morning. This after the travesty that was COVID, which vexed us for a couple years. Yet here we are.

We must remember there is nothing new under the Sun. As the world spins her intrigue we must look past all of it, to remind ourselves that part of the lack of newness is the constant need for personal revival. The dawning of Lent offers us the occasion to be introspective, to recall that if we are to have a better world we need to become better people. As Jordan Petersen says, if your own house isn't in order you cannot better order the world, which is a decidedly larger home than your own. And much less manageable than your person.

Lent gives us the opportunity to manage our person better. Ideally, at the end of it we will be better persons. If we succeed in that, we will have done our small part in making a better world. Get that snowball rolling, and who knows what great good can come of ourselves, of those near and dear to us, and, no doubt in my mind, of the union of nations.

I figure it's worth the risk of forty days personal reflection.

Ash Wednesday 2016

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent for Christianity in general, and Catholics in particular. It is a time of penance, something we all need. We all need to atone for our failures, for our sins.

Humanity is fallen; the world around us is fallen. That's why people do wrong, and genes mutate into cancers and such. Nothing in our universe is perfect, but there is a difference between we humans and the lower animals and inanimate things nearby. We can choose. We can decide whether to do well or ill. It is what makes us special, and separates us from all else.

But surely these next few weeks aren't for Christians alone? It would seem that no matter what you believe, or whether you believe anything at all, you would still think it a good idea to improve yourself, or to do good things for those in need around you. Even if you cannot bring yourself to believe in something beyond humanity or beyond the universe itself, you can still make the effort to make yourself a better person and enrich the lives of those whom you come in contact with day in and day out. It's the one area where the seriously religious and the secularists can surely agree with each other, don't you think?

So try to become a better person this Lenten season. Smile, help people, discipline yourself in the positive habits of mind and body. You might be pleasantly surprised as the good habits formed become a part of you. The folks around you may be downright shocked. And we'll all be the better for it.