Uphill idealist

Ash Wednesday is a holy day that brings reflection and contemplation to the center of life. Perhaps for me it's a day to reflect on spiritual matters that I am too busy to notice. Or maybe it is the meeting of slowing down and preparation with the Lenten season being married to the coldest and bleakest times of year in my region (WNY). Either way I love this slow and sad day. It's a sadness that marks the shadows and valleys of life and instead of diminishing or avoiding them - embraces death wholly and if even so bold to mark its presence with a mark on our foreheads. Ash Wednesday and Lent is a time to be honest about our vulnerability and limits. This marking of who we actually are is important, and good, and sad - and probably why I love this melancholy day. As Lent has begun for 2015 I think it will be a time of relenting for me. Relenting seeking something-anything more. Relenting from being better, seeking perfection and longing for someone to see something special in me...

This last weekend I had the privilege of helping with a local community beautification and clean up projec t in Jamestown, NY. The group cleaned up debris and painted under a train bridge and then got to work on the start of a mural 12 feet high by 20 feet wide that will be fixed to a central area of the downtown. The mural is the first of what we hope to be many community art projects to help build home-town pride and to help dissuade the graffiti tagging that has been occurring at increasing rate recently. When the dump truck pulled away from the underpass on Saturday, it was filled to the brim with dirt, garbage and debris that had built up over time. This underpass is located close to our city's high school and many students pass through it each day. This morning, I wonder what their reaction was as they walked through a cleaner, freshly painted path in contrast to what it had looked like prior to the hard work of the volunteers on Saturday? Sometimes you have to see some dirt ...