A Day Late

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. "Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris." (Remember human, you are dust and to dust you will return.") —Genesis 3:19

Wikipedia got it right in the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_Wednesday

I decided that I would not give up chocolate for Lent, because I knew that I wouldn't stick to it. I have removed the Pathwords application from my Facebook profile until Lent is over and I will find the links to the Gregorian chant sites online so that I can listen to the chant for Lent. I should probably give up NCIS for Lent. Maybe I'd get more done in the evenings, but I like the characters too much to give them up.

Mostly, life is lentish enough all year round here, so I am not worrying too much about it. I think that I should focus on the postive and see what if anything I can do to be useful. (Giving up watching the news might not be a bad thing.)

Writing to the President's special assistant on disability about changes that we need is one thing I must do. (Friends and family who are reading this, you have, as my late father used to say, "A license to nag". Comments, emails, remarks on what you think needs to be done, and along the line of, "So have you written the letter yet?" will be greatly appreciated.)

The Clinton administration made strides toward making it more possible for someone with a disability to earn more and not be cut off from access to health care. I believe that leveling the playing field and making only one standard instead of the current two in SSA would be a big step forward. Instead of SGA (Substantial Gainful Activity) allowing people to work half time at whatever is the usual and customary amount for the kind of work they do in the area in which they live would make sense. Ah, yes, making the government make sense---

I hope for a Lent of rain. The rain that was supposed to come yesterday and continue today never materialized. We need water so desperately! So I will pray for rain. Please join me.

My St Patrick's design's are ready on my cafepress website--link to the right.

A good although not very bloggish week.

Ash Wednesday

It is the first day of Lent and the first daffodil is blooming! It seems too cold for me, but then I am not a plant! It is beautiful and fragile and I wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been for a friend's visit. While she waited for me to come to the door, she noticed it and pointed it out to me.

The daffodil blooming on the first day of Lent is a glorious symbol for the flower is a symbol of the resurrection, as appropriate for Easter as the lily is and full of hope and joy. Even though we seem still locked into cold warmth will come, the sun will shine and the world come alive again.

Then I decided to try to solve my computer keyboard problem--the space bar went back to sticking--by seeing if anyone in my neighborhood had a usable keyboard. Through the power of our neighborhood list I immediately had more offers than I could answer and two keyboards from one kind woman sit in my front hall waiting to be tried out.

All of this engenders gratitude and offsets the fear that builds when I listen to the news with its constant din of recession. Our community is not the world given us by the nightly news but our neighbors, our friends, our family. Our economy is more than the sum total of macro trackable events such as the stock market; it is even more than the sum total of all our transactions for it is about our interactions with each other on one on one encounters too.

I am more hopeful tonight than I have been in some time and am going to goof off and watch a movie.