Happy Lent!!

I suppose it would seem like an oxymoron to say such a thing, but truthfully that's how I feel about this time of the year. Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the forty day period before Easter known to many Christians everywhere as Lent. It's a time of prayer and preparation, mixed in with a little fasting, reflection, penance ... all that good stuff. I suppose it actually sounds a tad terrible, and I admit when I was younger it seemed that way to me too. But this year, I'm genuinely happy that Lent is finally here.

For the past few months, life has been just soo crazy... the economy going all wonky and eating away at my retirement savings, errands and day-to-day tasks, all kinds of things going on at work... it was all getting to the point where my whole existence was starting to get out of focus. Lent has come just in time. Now it's all about removing that focus of me and all the stuff that's been going on in my life... because, in the grand scheme of things, it's not all that important.

I also never realized how many people could be so thrown off by a small black smudge on a person's forehead. In the past, I was either in a Catholic elementary school where all my other classmates had marks on each one of their little foreheads, or I was only able to go to Mass in the evening where... you guessed it... matching cross-shaped smudges all around. So to walk into an office at lunchtime (I took a half day off), and be met with confused looks and quick side glances... Well, it was definitely something I would need to get used to. No one was rude, in fact some co-workers were genuinely curious, which I found refreshing. Interestingly, there wer also some who met my forehead with a little defense, some even made little jokes... for whatever personal reasons they had. Quite frankly, and completely without any anger or animosity, I say that I don't really care. Wearing ashes on our foreheads are not - never - meant to flaunt our faith, to wag a finger at "the non-Christians" and make them feel sinful and inferior.

"From ashes you came, and to ashes you will return" --- and when you say "amen", you acknowledge this truth and that with such a short amount of time to live this life, you have to do it like you're ready to go at any moment. The best life you possibly can... for Him.

the first...

So here I am. I'm terrible when it comes to even checking my email, and what am I doing? Dear God, I'm starting a blog. I know it takes dedication, and I don't really know what I'll be talking about, but heck I'm doing it anyway... Actually, I think I tried to do this once, and it ended up being terribly depressing. It turned into some kind of perpetual venting session, and looking back on it I see I went about it all wrong. Focusing on the negative whether on a small space on the internet or out there in the big world is never really going to get me anywhere. For now, I think I'll just record little bits of my mind everytime I feel like it. I'll try to type up something every week or so... I hope. Well, I'll try to anyways. I don't really know if anyone will read it, and frankly I wouldn't really mind if that happened. Perhaps I'll make this some sort of personal-and-yet-posted-out-there-for-the-whole-world-to-read-if-they-knew-where-to-go journal? A cathartic sort of blog for myself? Yeah.. let's go with that for now. It's open-ended and I think I like it starting out that way... I guess my choice of blog title is quite fitting after all. "The Hopeful Pursuit" ... of what, you ask? We'll have to see, now won't we..?