Eating Ashes

by John P. Flannery

A mark on the forehead with ashes.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of these marks in religious terms. Frankly, I don’t anymore. I had a child’s understanding of what it meant when I did think of it.

But it is about resisting temptation, thinking about that.

Some need a mark and a season to think about resisting temptation.

How many public figures have placed this mark on their forehead today, a faux show, who claim they believe but who hardly resist the influence of the sulphurous demon that they purport to resist and condemn.

It’s easy to say you oppose a story book devil.

It’s how you handle the real thing.

Our central casting infidel Trump told others today they should “repent.”

Imagine that!

Isn’t that the most magnificent hypocrisy uttered by a man who puts children in cages?

Trump wears a mask of reverence while granting us, Oh Lord, his daily lies.

Some believe bearing false witness is a sin.

Is it conceivable that Trump would ever “repent” of his craven daily deceptions?

The Mythologist, Joseph Campbell, spoke of how any one of us may be brought low, be reduced to eating ashes, suffering humiliation, and we may with soul work in such low places find hope, humility and a rebirth of character and strength.

As we look around us, at our supposed agents of change, our elected officials, the closest cronies of our chief infidel, hypocrites all, and we know from deep within, that there is no hope that any one of them could find humility or be reborn to the faith that they pretend to represent or to fulfill the oath they swore to uphold.

They are lost in fear and selfish ambition and cultish devotion.

There was a time priests put the mark of ashes on my forehead while I kneeled on marble with my head bowed in reverence.

My Dad always told me we all worship in our own way.

When I was a kid I thought the ashes had to be placed on the forehead for some reason. You have to be carefully taught such things as a youngster.

I asked my Dad, a good and honest man, where were his ashes one Ash Wednesday.

I was young and he humored me.

He put his fingers in an ash tray and made the mark on his own forehead.

My Dad had no reason to repent.

Those who do don’t.

Just sayin’

JPF