To dust we shall return

Ash Wednesday is here, and for some of us, that means it’s time for the joyous celebration of Lent.

Joyous?

Yeah, there’s not often a lot of joy or celebration in a traditional Lent. Just check out the hymns and psalms, acknowledging and bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness. Whenever we start chanting in Lent, I hear Monty Python’s papier-mache God complaining, “It’s like those psalms, they’re soooo depressing.”

In years past, and often today, many Christians choose to interpret Lent as a season of scourging, of punishing yourself, carrying the woe of humanity’s murder of the Christ, etc. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Even my own Episcopalian brothers and sisters have fallen into this wail and woe from time to time.

Not me. Ashes notwithstanding.

To me, Lent is a season of reflection, a forty-day period of meditation and self-improvement. That doesn’t make it “New Year’s Resolutions Redux,” though certainly some people might latch onto it that way.

But I don’t think it helps God or anyone else for us to wear a metaphorical hair shirt for seven weeks. How does it help God for you to deny yourself chocolate or coffee? How does that make the world a better place?

I think if you give up something for Lent, there should be an actual reason for it beyond, “I’m giving something up for Lent.” Otherwise it is a hollow exercise, a public self-flagellation that serves no real purpose.