The Cure For Classic Narcissism

What I, personally, would have scripted to begin with the ushering in of the season, actually began with an episode of Backstrom (I’ll skip all the details, disclaimers, blah, blah, etc.) and ended with a letter from the pope._1,2

It was supposed to start with Ash Wednesday, my quitting.  

I just honestly didn’t know what it was I would quit. 

See, I think the last time I fasted for Lent, it was from coffee, but I wound up feeling so much better physically that there was no sense of sacrifice.  I’d only benefited from the process in such a way that it left me feeling more remorseful than clarified, and so I was pretty sure the practice just wasn’t for me, and the years have passed, and my observance of the season has become a lesser and lesser thing.

I can’t remember if last year I even remembered the start of Lent. 



There have probably been other little things iggling at my conscience, but it was after watching that one episode, at the very second that I thought, “who wrote this?” when I heard myself asking it with an air of elite-est ownership, as if I were the only person on the planet who knew anything at all about this kind of suffering or that or whatever ... that I knew.   I’ve turned way too deeply inward.




I’ve wallowed in this for three days now, trying to write every sentence perfectly.

I want to make sense.

I want to make a difference.

I want to do no harm.

I want to be different.

Pope Francis wrote a letter.

He told me to quit the indifference.

The rest is personal.₃

For at least a season.



1 You know, if those two weren’t friends with each other ~ and I don’t know that they wouldn’t be ~  I do know, at the very least, the pope would wash the bad detective’s feet.  

2  It ain't "ended" till He says it's ended.

3. Epitome of sentence with which I've striven.  It hardly makes sense in context.  But I relinquish it now.