⚓The Day After Mardi Gras / March 2022
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| The Day After Mardi Gras |
March 2022
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
💜💚💛
www.LEJ.world
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Outside,
Zamboni-like street sweepers wash
the cities, and Cajun chickens raise their necks up to see if it is safe to resume Life.
Inside,
we harbor our doubts, but suffer none whatsoever about this ceremony. It is Lent, and
Lent is the strangest holiday in all the Christian calendar. It celebrates for forty days everything the King Cake Baby Jesus grew up opposing. Yet it is the longest 'holiday' of the entire Faith.
Should you need a reason to be suspicious of evangelical religion's temporal powers consider that.
"In such order we find sad truth,"
L. A. Norma.
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Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is the last day of Carnival's ever-changing season of joy.
Suffering is not to be monkeyed with in these theological calculations. Carnival's pleasures, however, are reducible, by God (or His agent's with their inaccurate stopwatches).
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 will readily tell you). 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.
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"With Coronavirus down and shootings off, we have to run over tourists and fall off floats just to fuel QAnon theory!"
~ L. A. Norma to tourist
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LEJ's Louisiana
by Leonard Earl Johnsonof Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
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March 2022
The Day After Mardi Gras
Ash Wednesday
and the Forty Days of Lent
by Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2022, Leonard Earl Johnson,
All Rights Reserved~ * ~ ~ * ~ ~ * ~
LEJ's Louisiana
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
~ * ~ ~ * ~ ~ * ~
March 2022
The Day After Mardi Gras
Ash Wednesday
and the Forty Days of Lent
by Leonard Earl Johnson
© 2022, Leonard Earl Johnson,
All Rights Reserved
~ * ~ ~ * ~ ~ * ~
On Ash Wednesday,
the day after Mardi Gras, all over Louisiana Carnival lifted its joyous mantle leaving Lent's ashen smudge in its place.
At Cathedrals from New Orleans to Lafayette,
At Cathedrals from New Orleans to Lafayette,
business suits stood cheek-by-jowl with crimson capes and smeared-lipstick ladies awaiting priests dressed in the Vestments of Sorrow, smearing The Sign of The Cross on the celebrant's forehead with thumbs dipped in the ashes of last year's Palm Sunday Palms.
Outside,
Zamboni-like street sweepers wash
the cities, and Cajun chickens raise their necks up to see if it is safe to resume Life.
Inside,
we harbor our doubts, but suffer none whatsoever about this ceremony. It is Lent, and
To ashes we are returning.
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| Banana Tree / photo credit: Deb Kohler |
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Should you need a reason to be suspicious of evangelical religion's temporal powers consider that.
Carnival's pleasurable time shrinks by measure of the inaccurate Pope Gregorian Calendar so as to accommodate lengthening Lent.
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Lent ~ by those same inaccurate calculations is codified into Canon Law so as to never lose one penitent day of suffering.
"In such order we find sad truth,"
L. A. Norma.
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| Clearing the Liturgical Air |
Next day, Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent's never-changing season of suffering.
"The Gregorian Calendar," L. A. Norma explains to a bewildered tourist sharing our pedicab,
"What with Easter changing with the moon, is none too accurate!
"For instance, in the secular world you have
leap year!"
"The Gregorian Calendar," L. A. Norma explains to a bewildered tourist sharing our pedicab,
"What with Easter changing with the moon, is none too accurate!
"For instance, in the secular world you have
leap year!"
🧧
Easter Sunday marks Lent's end, and also welcomes Spring.
Spring/Easter may be the oldest human celebration calculated (or miscalculated) into Canon Law, with those aforementioned instruments created out of faith in suffering and suspicion of pleasure.
Easter Sunday marks Lent's end, and also welcomes Spring.
It was 'borrowed' by the marauding legions of Rome. Borrowed from religions they happened upon that had been beating their own drums long before Christianity went on the road.
Spring/Easter may be the oldest human celebration calculated (or miscalculated) into Canon Law, with those aforementioned instruments created out of faith in suffering and suspicion of pleasure.
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| Beansprout |
Lenten fasting knits Carnival's raveled sleeve and prepares us for Spring's rebirth. Like the bean sprout and the jazz man say:
"Blow the roof off the sucker"
𝅘𝅥𝅮🎷🎜🎝🎺𝅘𝅥𝅯
🎵
It has been a good Lent so far this year, with sunny mornings and a warm place in the kitchen to read Internet newspapers and sip coffee.
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| Photo credit: Eric Douglas |
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.
Your comments and corrections
are welcome
(A lesser version of this story first appeared in 2004)
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Copyright, 2022, Leonard Earl Johnson
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Copyright, 2022, Leonard Earl Johnson
all rights reserved
For more L. E. J.'s Yours Truly in a Swamp go to
www.LEJ.world
www.LEJ.world
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© 2022, Leonard Earl Johnson,
All Rights Reserved.
.JPG)  If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world anytime. They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years. |
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| © Leonard Earl Johnson |
✍ If you wish to read any month's column go to www.LEJ.world anytime. They are posted on the first of each month and polished for the next few years.~ ~ ~ LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world, Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER, and historically at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans publication of the It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana © 2022, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 8:32 AM
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