Wednesday, February 18, 2015 – Ash Wednesday
Today is Ash Wednesday. You know what that means? March Madness is just around the corner. No, no, no. It has nothing to do with basketball. Nor does it signify that the priests and nun stayed up all night smoking cigars and playing cards as my cousins always said. It is the beginning of the Lenten Season which ends with Easter. So if your faith is based in a kneeler religion, you are probably celebrating Ash Wednesday in some way.
Last year Ash Wednesday was in March. One year ago on Ash Wednesday, my commitment for Lent was that I would write something every day and I am proud of myself for doing so. If you are so inclined, (aka bored, with nothing to do) you can enter a term in the search engine on the right of the blog and go back and relive the thrilling days of last year.
Here is Last Year’s Day One Post
Lent 2014 Day One Today is March 5, 2014, Ash Wednesday. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent in the Western Christian calendar, directly following Shrove Tuesday. Occurring 46 days before Easter, it is a moveable feast that can fall as early as February 4 and as late as March 10. According to the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus Christ spent 40 days fasting in the desert, where he endured temptation by Satan. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of this 40-day liturgical period of prayer and fasting or abstinence. Of the 46 days until Easter, six are Sundays. As the Christian designation of Sabbath, Sundays are not included in the fasting period and are instead “feast” days during Lent. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the practice of placing ashes (formally called The Imposition of Ashes) on the foreheads of adherents as a celebration and reminder of human mortality, and as a sign of mourning and repentance to God. The ashes used are typically gathered from the burning of the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday. That is the Wikipedia version. But I figured if Jesus could spend 40 days in the wilderness, no GPS, no cable TV, no Net flicks, no McDonald’s, and then I could write a page every day. I mean He was out there getting tempted by Satan. So here it goes. Contrary to what my cousins used to say, the ashes are not derived from the priests and nuns smoking cigars. Each day until Easter, I will sit and write something that fills one horizontal 8×10 sheet. If you watch The Big Bang Theory, you see that the creator of the series, Chuck Lorre, ends each program with a single par graphical page. That is where I got the idea. So meatless today – Ash Wednesday and all Fridays, writing one page per day. I pretty much have the abstinence part covered.
Today is also a day of remembrance.
Randall Edwin (Honeyboy) Duffey
B: August 17, 1907
D: February 18, 2000
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