FWD http://www.naplesnews.com/today/religion/grace.htm
LENT CAN BE A CALL TO WITNESS
Friday, March 20, 1998
By DAVID YOUNT, Scripps Howard News Service [Naples Daily News]
With the public's attention focused on the turmoil within the White House,
scant notice was taken of a man carrying a 7-foot cross and another
spreading ashes outside the presidential mansion on Ash Wednesday. But the
police were there to handcuff and arrest them as they knelt passively on
the sidewalk.
For years police tolerated a permanent encampment of anti-war protesters in
Lafayette Park facing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But with the end of the
Cold War it was widely assumed that sufficient cause for protest had
disappeared, and the squatters were turned out. When the Persian Gulf War
began eight years ago, some U.S. religious leaders marched on the White
House and kept vigil for peace, but the war was brief and popular, and the
protesters were widely dismissed as unrealistic do-gooders.
That was then; this is now. The president has sent forces to the Gulf,
prepared to renew the conflict, which Pentagon officials acknowledge will
cause thousands of civilian deaths. The United Nations Children's Fund
estimates that every month as many as 4,500 Iraqi boys and girls die or
become severely ill because of U.N. economic sanctions imposed against
Iraq.
I was brought up to take Lent seriously as a season of fasting and penance.
As schoolchildren we wore ashes on our foreheads as badges of honor and
resisted washing our faces lest we lose this sign of our mortality. Of
course, well-cared-for children wear their mortality lightly, believing
they will live forever. Iraqi children, deprived of food, heat and
medicine, face death daily.
As children we vied with one another to deprive ourselves of simple
pleasures during these 40 days before Easter, aware that it was a time to
test our resolve, as Jesus had done in the desert before he began his
ministry. In practice, our self-denials were insignificant - depriving
ourselves of candy, comic books and TV-watching for the duration.
Nevertheless, we were taught to "offer up" our small sacrifices for those
in real need.
Adult Christians typically take a more activist approach to the penitential
season, trying to do good, even it is only to pray more or read the Bible
daily. It is no small challenge to imitate Christ, and in Lent we reflect
how far we fall short.
The demonstration outside the White House on Ash Wednesday was organized by
Dorothy Day House, which cares for the poor and homeless in the Nation's
Capital. If you are a Baby Boomer or Generation Xer, you may be excused for
being unfamiliar with the late Ms. Day. When I met her in the '50s I knew
at once that this no-nonsense woman, living in voluntary poverty, was the
closest thing to Jesus I would meet in my life. She was the saint of New
York's Bowery, feeding and housing the poor and outcast long before the
nation realized it had a homeless problem. Instead of preaching, she
witnessed. Dorothy is with her Maker now, but if she were still with us,
she would have been there outside the White House, silently witnessing for
the innocent with her arms handcuffed behind her back.
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