03/13/2006

Happy Birthday mom


The harder you try, the harder the going gets.

So get going.

The myths say that the cyclops lived a life of desperate resignation, because with their one eye, they could see the exact circumstances of their own death. The day, the time, the method, the circumstance.

We can tend to a cyclopian vision of the life we live. Today is all. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow is ephemeral.

Don't tell me that Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, good and evil are merely delusions dreamed up by an accidental convergence of meat and mentality, in order to assuage it's fear of the awareness of it's own eventual demise. There's more involved than that.

Temptation is not an accidental reality.

Lent is a journey.

Not all such trips are made on endless flat roads.

Lent is a reacquaintance with the dips and rumble strips and steep inclines of our lives.
We've trained ourselves to ignore, avoid, absolve ourselves of these deviations from the straight, uninvolved path.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

So I start my lenten journey on the road to hell.

I intend to fast.
I intend to abstain.
I intend to be introspective and learn from my errors.
I intend to be at peace with my fellow travelers.
I intend to pray more.
I intend to hold my tongue when anger rises.
I intend to be a better father.
I intend to feed my soul, to pay attention to that poor neglected, emaciated thing.
I intend to be the saint, not the sinner.

Free will has nothing to do with smooth sailing.

Free will is the ability to choose to do the right thing.

It is also the ability to choose to do the wrong thing, or worse, to fall into the habits of sinful behavior.

Ash Wednesday is like the day that a 20-plus-year smoker takes the pack out of her pocket and throws it away.

The rest is a breeze, right?

Not Quite.

I believe in God, therefore I believe in the Devil.
God is love and wants what is best for us.
The devil wants us to Forget that both God and He exist.


I intend to fast. (Little dizzy today at lunchtime, better just grab a little something)
I intend to abstain (Beef stew sounds good......After the last spoonful: "What day's today? Friday! Oh well....)
I intend to be introspective and learn from my errors (I don't have the time right now. Too much going on. Maybe later)
I intend to be at peace with my fellow travelers (Unless that fat broad in front of me on the subway knocks that d*mn purse of her's into my newspaper one more time.....)
I intend to pray more (as schedules permit)
I intend to hold my tongue when anger rises (Who exactly do you think you are kidding?)
I intend to be a better father (When the kid messes up, I still end up coming down on him like a ton of bricks. Nice changeup!)
I intend to feed my soul, to pay attention to that poor neglected, emaciated thing.


You get the idea.......

The intentions are great in a Platonic sense.

Their inherent goodness is in the execution, the doing, the work of striving for perfection.