Ash Wednesday- We do well to reflect on the usual readings for today . They speak of ritual disciplines such as fasting. They make it clear that they are not ends in themselves. They cannot displace the purpose of a contrite heart. Joel 2:13 does call a fast, but  the people are to tear their hearts, no their garments.Every day at the end of the school day, we recited an act of contrition in Catholic school, but we rushed through it and did not really hear it. We look for contrition and more often see scripted half apologies. To feel the guilt of doing wrong is a step toward change, toward repentance. Sin is breaking God's heart.

 

Thursday- Frugality is a virtue so far down the list, that many would see it as a vice for the demand growth our economy demands. I don't think that it means being cheap, but more along the lines of careful with resources and avoiding waste. Frugality may come back into style as we consider that we are burning through so many natural resources. Respect for God's creation could well include the old virtue of frugality. When I was a child, we saved pennies and put them in a container, much like our One Great Hour of Sharing fish. The point was to sacrifice some treat for the poor. Perhaps, we could consider looking at what we waste, say the soda pop we don't really need on a trip to Indianapolis, save it, and give it to the poor.

 

Friday-Adam Thomas writes of Lent as a period to remember who and whose we are (2/9 Christian Century, p.19). In the same issue, Margaret Bendroth writes of the weight of the past in an age of amnesia.Craig Barnes bemoans the distaste for history among seminary students. It reminds one of the Greek saying that not knowing of people before you were born renders one forever a child. Make a timeline and jot down some significant moral events in your life, where you acted in terms of baptism or not.

 

Saturday-Greg Grandin has written of a failed experiment in Fordlandia, Henry Ford's own enormous rubber plantation in the Amazon. He's been interviewed on NPR about it  Huxley made fun of the adulation of Ford when people invoked the name our ford, instead of our Lord in Brave New World. (Ford was called the Jesus Christ of industry by some). This industrial Eden fell apart rather quickly, and soon the jungle moved back in. At the same time, he made Greenfield Village reflect a past that the assembly line had changed. Now we can look at Michigan and see some of the same rusting industrial plant as in the Amazon. Our Honda plant has robots displacing skilled welders for the car bodies. The future rarely goes as we predict. It is therefore good to know that God is moving ahead of us, all the time.