Ash Wednesday (Adams)

Ash Wednesday....I of course became outraged this morning when Robin Meade on CNN Headline News said that “today is Ash Wesnesday the begininning of Lent when ''Catholics"" celebrate by putting ashes on their foreheads.” First of all I am a Lutheran and we do it too. Now granted we are only Catholic light but there are several liturgical churches like the Anglicans who observe Ash Wednesday as well. Additionally Ash Wednesday is a big day. It is of course the beginning of Lent but without an understanding of Lent you cannot appreciate Ash Wednesday.

Of course for the alcoholics (like myself) it is the day that follows Fat Tuesday but really Fat Tuesday is the day which precedes Ash Wednesday being the last day of hedonistic abandon before the beginning of the fasting and austerity of Lent. That is of course bull shit and so bastardizes the meaning Ash Wednesday and Lent that it disgusts even me.
Many people, catholics and Lutherans and other Christians and for that matter non Christians often give up something for Lent. It is supposed to be an expression of denial to remind us of the upcoming suffering and death of Jesus but it tends to be something very self serving like dieting or giving up cigarettes or something like that. Catholics also have some dietary restrictions during Lent which I know some Lutherans abide by as well. Ash Wednesday is observed by fasting, abstinence (from meat), and repentance—a day of contemplating one's transgressions. The ashes are sacramentals, not a sacrament. The Penitential psalms are read.

Ash Wednesday is big for me because Lent is big for me. It starts the season of preparation but preparation for what? I think everyone generally views it as a preparation for Easter and Christ rising from the dead. Other people might think it is the penitence preparing for the suffering of Good Friday. I like that better. Good Friday really does cap Lent. Easter is the feelgood pay back. Good friday is the final anguished gush of shame for how sinful we are and how great Christ’s sacrifice was. I am more in line with Catholic’s who say Lent runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday or Maunday Thursday as we call it. I LOVE MAUNDY THURSDAY. One of the things we Lutherans have screwed up is the personal confession and forgiveness of our sins. We do corporate confession and absolution as a group. Very clean but not very cleansing for me. On Maundy Thursday we confess silently and in our Church the pastor calls me by name and reminds me of the forgiveness of my sins and it is very powerful.



I need forgiveness. A lot. it is empowering to know you are sinner, confess and feel the pain and weight of your actions and then go confident of forgiveness. It does NOT EVER free you up to be a sinner but it does allow to accept your sinfulness and know that there is still through God’s Grace a path to redemtion.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are the annual long reminder of our sin and God’s Grace. Lutherans love Lent and I embrace it being here again.

All that having been said I took note the other day...just prior to the start of Lent and it was lisa Loring’s birthday. Coincidence? I think not.

OK....so I am...and have been obsessed with Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family. Originally it was the cheerful Lisa Loring who was really sweet and mainly concerned about her pet spiders and had a cute Marie Antoinette doll which she would occasionally guillotine. Sweet stuff indeed! In the movies of course she was played by the teen (perhaps preteen) troubling Christina Ricci. I will never forget her with Pugsley strapped into the elctric chair and her about to flip the switch explaining that they were about to play a game called “is there a God?” Good stuff.


I think to be fair though I was obsessed be her even in the 1964 black and white show. Seriously, has there ever been a better show then the Addams Family? Gomez. Morticia, Lurch, Pugsley, Thing, Cousin It....even the over the top Uncle Fester. No one EVER wore a mole skin coat as well as Fester. But holding the show and the movie together was always the diminutive Wednesday.

In the series she was just a sweet, inncoent paralyzingly pale girl in pig tails. Dealing with her fat oafish brother who was at best a simpleton. In the movie she was rather...dark. In either case she was awesome. I believe when we go back and review this point in history she will indeed be viewed as...important.



Why isn’t anyone running her for President. Hillary? I don’t think so. Think Wednesday would have any problem with the Iraquis? She would bring Rumsfeld back, not to run the war but to go over there with her and Dick Cheney and just freak everyone out.