Ash Wednesday and the 40 Days of Lent / March 2019
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by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
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March 2019
Ash Wednesday and the Forty Days of Lent
BY Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2019, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
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by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
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March 2019
Ash Wednesday and the Forty Days of Lent
BY Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2019, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
L. E. J. as the late Ernie K-Doe
Yours Truly in a Swamp
by
Leonard Earl Johnson
www.LEJ.org
"Ain't nothing in the world time and money won't cure."
~ Ernie K-Doe, New Orleans Musician and Emperor of The World (February 22, 1933 – July 5, 2001)
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Ash Wednesday
and the Forty Days of Lent
and the Forty Days of Lent
by Leonard Earl Johnson
On Ash Wednesday (March 6), all over Louisiana, Carnival lifted its joyous mantle, leaving Lent's ashen smudge in its place.
At New Orleans' Saint Louis Cathedral, business suits stood cheek-by-jowl with crimson capes and smeared-lipstick ladies awaiting priests dressed in the Vestments of Sorrow, putting The Sign of The Cross on their foreheads, with thumbs dipped in the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday palms.
Outside, spirited rains wash The City.
Inside, though I have doubts about theological things,
I have none whatsoever about this ceremony,
to ashes I am returning.
Papal Calendar.
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Lent,
"In this order of priority we find sad Truths,"
L. A. Norma.
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| Clearing the Liturgical Air |
"The Gregorian Calendar, by which we live today and measure all this, is not too accurate," L. A. Norma explains to a bewildered tourist sharing our pedicab, "what with the date of Easter changing with the moon!"
Easter marks the end of Lent. It is also a ceremony welcoming Spring. Borrowed from religions that came before Christianity. It may be the oldest human celebration, and it is calculated (or miscalculated), again by Canon Law, with instruments created with faith in suffering and suspicion of pleasure.
Suffering is not to be monkeyed with in these theological calculations. Carnival's pleasures, however, are reducible, by God (or His agents with their inaccurate stopwatches).
Lenten fasting repairs Winter's damage and Carnival's excess, and prepares us for Spring's rebirth. Like the jazz man says,
"Blow the roof off the sucker ..."
It has been a good Lent this year, with sunny mornings and a warm place in the kitchen to read Internet newspapers and sip coffee. The live oaks outside our dormer windows are a soft young green. Live oaks don't dump their leaves till Spring's new buds arrive (as followers of JFK conspiracies know). Then they change from old dark green to young soft green almost overnight.
Today soft-green rules coastal Louisiana, and we old alligators lie on the banks in whatever sun we can find dreaming of Easter baskets and Spring.
Today soft-green rules coastal Louisiana, and we old alligators lie on the banks in whatever sun we can find dreaming of Easter baskets and Spring.
(A lesser version of this story first appeared in 2004)
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Copyright, 2019, Leonard Earl Johnson
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Copyright, 2019, Leonard Earl Johnson
all rights reserved
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| Coming Next Month! April 2019's column: "AUSSIES ON THE TRAIN with Marjorie Lawrence" |
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It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson
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posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 6:26 AM
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