30, 40, 60, 100

Lent, 40 days; School, 100 days

Is there a correlation in that? I may be showing my age, but I don't get this new idea of dressing 5 year olds up like centenarians to recognize the 100th day of school. I kind of took a wee bit of offense at the entire idea of 'cutifying' age. Don't we have enough to put up with?  The whole aging process is kind of ungraceful all by itself, let's not make fun of it by teaching young children to imitate the image. She is 95 years shy of 100.

I am on a rant, I admit it. Sometimes they just pop out and need to be aired. Who knows where they come from. In this case it would appear that it comes from my sensitivity at aging right now. We live in a society that shuts our aged away and dishonors the act of aging by perpetuating youth as long as possible. (Don't believe me? Listen carefully to television advertising.)

So what does this have to do with 40 days of Lent? Good question. Lent for Christ was 40 days of denial, solitude, and wrestling with temptation. Jesus was only 30 years old having such a crisis. Of course, in his day 30 would never equate to 30 today. I don't claim to be a scholar, but I would think that 30 years of life in that world would have given him perhaps our equivalent worldly wisdom of a 50 year old. We may have prolonged lifespans, but I don't think we've done a thing to enhance maturity. As a matter of fact, I think we have paid a price for this by keeping our young people young for too long and have lost respect for the wisdom of our elders. But I digress, and feel my father coming through.

Okay, Christ was 30, I'm in my 60's. what can I learn from imitating his completely unduplicatable time in the desert? I can't imitate his sojourn into the desert, it's not in my life parameters to go out into the wilderness.

Perhaps that's it. I can come as close to realizing what he faced, felt and internalized as my granddaughter did today about being aged by trying to look 100.  It's a very tiny particle of learning that she gleaned from that. I also believe that I shall glean minuscule bits of spirituality by such an imitation. She learned much more about counting to 100 than about the aged. I have learned far more about crankiness and misery from past Lenten experiences than spiritual truths.

Should I not learn more by meditation, prayers and reading, and perhaps a concentrated search for the joy in the universe, than I shall by denial and suffering? Frankly, I believe the Buddhists are right, life is about suffering. Shall I not, instead, search for the happiness in this incarnation and spread the word that Love truly is all you need?

She really did look incredibly adorable as she pranced off to school.  I don't know about you, but I can't prance anymore, it disappeared with age. Here is my small joy for this day in Lent.

BLD