You'd Better Get Right Before You Get Left

Written on February 21th

Last Friday, it was brought to my attention that I was in the midst of Lent. In the absence of faux Mardi Gras parties and ash crosses on foreheads, Ash Wednesday was just another day. At George School, the day would be marked by countless people asking me if I knew there was something on my face. At BC, there would be 200+ masses and a sea of students and professors anointed. Dust we were, and dust we will become.

In Turkmenistan there is one Catholic church 400 km from where I live. There was no morning mass, no prayers, and I mostly forgot about the whole thing until another volunteer mentioned it on Friday. I usually do try to give something up for Lent. In America, it seems amazing now the amount of things that I thought I couldn’t live without, that would be a sacrifice. I gave up make-up, Late Night Chicken Fingers, vending machines, and VH1. The shocking part was how easy it was, after about a week, to live without those things.

I am not in America now, and there are two interrelated problems. While my life isn’t stoicly hermetic, it isn’t rife with unnecessary frill. Secondly, to sacrifice the few frills I do have, is to court insanity. I would give up coffee, but I only drink it when I am inches from tears and homesick. I would give up my iPod, but that’s the daily connection I have with English. I would give up alcohol, but I’m an unmarried girl in a Muslim country and it’s a bit of a mute point anyway. I can’t even do, as was suggested by some Archbishop somewhere to give up carbon emissions because it is cold and my only source of heat is currently a natural gas flame.

I am welcoming of suggestions…