Ash Wednesday - Sr. Bucky

 Good Ash Wednesday morning, good people of Lent. It's the first of 40 days of the Lenten Season. Like a fine wine, this season needs to age and then aerate before it is fully appreciated.

It's amazing to me how many of us are still stuck in 6th Grade Sunday School when we were taught to "give up something" for Lent - a small sacrifice to reflect the Great sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.

I can still hear Sr. Bucky's high, thin, post-menopausal voice shrilling, "Surely you can give up yer bubble gum or penny candy for 40 DAYS and 40 NIGHTS after JESUS, himself (make a fast sign of the cross after a quick bow of the head) Suffered in AGONY on the cross for YOUR SINS."

No, Bucky wasn't her name. It was Sr. Mary Joseph Something-Or-Another. We called her Sr. Bucky behind her back because she had really awful bucked and splayed teeth.

I know, I know. We were horrid children. Horrid. I know that because Sr. Bucky told us that at least three times a day. After a while, you know, you just figure, what the heck. No matter how good I am, she'll always and only think I'm horrid.

SooOOooo . . . to her face it was, "Yes, sister," and "No, sister," and "Please, sister," and "Thank you, sister," but after school, far, far away from earshot of her or any of the other nuns, it was "Ugh! Sr. Bucky."

Then there came the day when one of the fathers of one of the kids in the church school who was a dentist "fixed" Sr. Bucky's teeth. Well, he yanked them all out and gave her dentures. I have to think there was another remedy to the poor dear's orthodontic challenge, but that was probably the cheapest and easiest and so it was what was done.

She was so proud of those dentures. Seriously. And, you know, it did dramatically change her appearance. But, not her disposition. She was still a horrid human being. So, we continued to call her Sr. Bucky. And, for her part, she continued to call us horrid children.

So, my memories of Ash Wednesday and Lent as a child are that we were served a double portion of the guilt trips and images of the suffering and agony of Jesus. I think the word "SUFFERING" was written on the BlackBoard and stayed there throughout the entire 40 days and 40 nights of Lent, lest we forget.

It was replaced the Monday after Easter with colorful butterflies who perched themselves on the words, "HE IS RISEN!". Or, "ALLELUIA!" Or "REJOICE!". It varied from year to year, depending on that particular nun's mood.

How we ever made it through without losing our minds and breaking the Sixth Commandment I'll never fully understand.

Later on, after Vatican II as I recall, some clergy tried to make up for the sins of the fathers (as it were) and try a new tack. "Take something ON for Lent," was the new Lenten slogan. We were to try something new. A new way to pray or meditate. A new course of study. Learn a new language.

You know, something that was rollicking good fun. Which missed the point just as badly as giving up candy for Lent. I have come to know that Ash Wednesday is really a joyful day.

Yes, way. Okay, it's not like the joy of Christmas, and it's nowhere near the joy of Easter. There is a maturity to the joy of Ash Wednesday. Sort of the difference between appreciating a glass of Boone's Farm Wine at $1.99 per bottle and a glass of 2010 Domaine Armand Rousseau, Chambertin Grand Cru at $75,000 per bottle.

It begins with understanding that famous statement from Carl Sagan, "“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff”.

Once you get your head wrapped around that, you begin to appreciate that the smudge of ashes on your forehead on Ash Wednesday is the beginning of a process to connect you more securely with the origins of your life.

It is to understand that we are connected in ways too deep for human understanding that we are part of a Great Mystery that includes stars and comets, planets and asteroids, sun and moon, ocean and stream, mountains and valleys.

It's about understanding what Bill Nye (the Science Guy) used to say, "We are a speck on a speck, orbiting a speck, in the corner of a speck, in the middle of nowhere."

That puts us all in our place, including Sr. Bucky who, poor tortured soul, didn't get to understand or appreciate that until after she, herself, returned 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes'. Which is why she treated us like dirt.

She had no idea that when Joni Mitchell sang the words to Woodstock, she was not being a hippie radical, she was singing the joyful truth:

We are stardust, we are golden / We are billion-year-old carbon
And we've got to get ourselves / Back to the garden

So, friends, Rejoice! It's Ash Wednesday! We're all gonna die. So, take this time to really live. As de Chardin said, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Your Lenten task is not to become spiritual. You already are. Your task, this Lent, is to become the BEST human being you can be before you return to the spiritual plane from which you came.

Let's get on with it, shall we? Don't give something up. Don't take something on. Be more of the image God intended when you were conceived and created.

Gratitude is a good place to begin. Find one thing to be thankful for today and then watch how your heart begins to open. I don't know how it works. It's a mystery to me. I just know that it does.

I am convinced that if you cracked open the middle of the middle of this planet, the sound that would emerge is millions of billions and trillions of voices saying in millions and billions and trillions of languages and tongues, "THANK YOU".

But, all those languages would merge together and the sound you would hear is not specific words but laughter. Deep, raucous, joyful laughter.

And that, my friends, is your Lenten assignment if you choose to take it: To listen for the joy in the center of the universe.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia!