Ash Wednesday

Well, on this first Day of Lent I had oatmeal for breakfast, I had vegetarian salad bar in a restaurant (business lunch), and a salad for dinner we made at home from spinach, feta, fennel and leftover couscous. And I had a piece of cheese to accompany my nightly shot of drugs and I had some orange juice after I did 5K on the treadmill.
I did border on righteous anger a couple of times mainly directed at the Woman Who Claims to be Our Member of Parliament but I did manage to control them before my Flights of Anger got too far down the runway.
At the grocery store tonight I bought avocados, whole grain pita, some white potatoes, some purple sweet potatoes (it was all they had) and some Gatorade on sale. (the last item is Lent Questionable I know, but if do a sweaty workout it is my hydration drink)
I did not watch TV (except for the news) but that is easy for me. No Angry Birds and the one hour on line time was dodgy.
I went to a Lent Service but chose not to get the smear of ash on my forehead as I consider myself too much of a Lent Poser and not the real thing. Or at least I have a feeling of discomfort in being part of a ritual that I do not fully comprehend, understand or feel like a full participant.
But I did learn a new word: compunction. The homilist seemed imply that this was the nadir of regret and remorse , or to put it more colloquially as sorry as sorry can be. I am a bit muddled as the Catholic Dictionary says:
A momentary sorrow or regret for having done, or contemplated doing, something wrong. It may also be a slight feeling of remorse, without implying either complete repentance or a firm resolve not to do the same wrong thing again. (Etym. Latin compunctio, remorse, the sting of conscience; from compungere, to prick.).

But etymology and definitions aside the word to me gave me focus on empathy and understanding. He spoke also about Alms for the Poor being actually debt repayment to God for forgiving our sins. (all of this is way to hard for me and why I do not feel ready to have ashes on the forehead) but here is the way I took it. I think that sin is essentially letting the self (call it ego if you wish) to rule you and forgiveness of sin lets you focus on the planet: the people, the animals, the water, the air, the forests, even the oil (does it really make sense to pump it out of the ground and burn it as fast as we can?) .

One really good suggestion the homilist made was to pick two days of the week and just have a bowl of rice that day - nothing else, no meat, no butter, no salt, no vegetables, nothing else except for the rice. That would give you an incredible feeling of self but you could work to transcend that into forgiveness. I am not sure if I would have to courage to search for faith for that for any length of time.

So I guess I am going to take the new word “Compunction” as meaning that I am going to work during these 40 days on getting out of self, of parking the ego and letting myself feel the pain of others to the best of my ability and then doing something about it, Which I think is the whole point of what Jesus tried to tell us, but he did not have too many listeners and even less who understood.

This Lent business is going to be tough – I should have maybe just gotten the ashes on the forehead and as the homilist said just “follow the rules”. It would have likely been easier ….