After a particularly enjoyable lunch round of reminiscing with one of my brothers the other day, he noted that we are of the age now that we talk about the past a whole lot more than we do the future. And he’s right. Time itself lets us know there is a whole lot more of the past to be talked about. And the future, when you come right down to it, is mostly speculation, isn’t it?
One of the counter-intuitive blessings of Lent is that it is long enough to be tedious. It’s simply not possible (at least in my experience) to keep up a state of intense spiritual activity for the whole forty days (or forty-six, if we count the Sundays of Lent). Forty days is time enough to start out feeling very high-minded about what one has chosen to give up as a penance or take on as a devotional practice, and to come down to earth with the humbling recognition that we’re not quite at the level of holiness we thought we were.