jacktellslies

I'm not one for sacrifice. I am not necessarily at odds with systems built around denial, but I think that a better idea might be a sort of rapturous hedonism. One should deeply appreciate the physical, and if you aren't sufficiently amazed and overwhelmed by it, then it isn't worth doing, or you don't deserve it, as you please. However, I like the idea of Lent. I admit, as with a good many of the things that I believe, I'm only playing with it. But repenting can be very pretty when done properly, and, obviously, refraining from things forces them out of the commonplace, reminds us to adore them.

Besides that, I am above all things a fishmonger, and Lent, for us, is a time of plenty. (The reversal is further proof that real fishmongers, true fishmongers, are something other and clearly better than human.) Even in this modern age, repentance means fish. An artist and fishcutter initiate and I were discussing the idea that the Church has deemed three professions worthy of patronage: the arts, architecture, and fish. For a time, all three were likely supported almost exclusively by Catholicism's attentions. Artists and architects have outgrown the association, but our year is still largely measured by an ecclesiastical calendar. Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculórum. Amen.

It has come to my attention, however, that the Church has betrayed us! In this time of sin and war, even a Christian's most holy duty, to eat fish on Fridays in Lent, is dispensable. Our priests have stated that eating meat on days of abstinence is not a sin if one has forgotten that one shouldn't. Blasphemy! If this is the case with all of the Church's regulations, and every wicked act only counted if I was actively thinking, while doing it, that I was making the whole chorus of saints and angels cry, then I've sinned far less than I previously thought. Not only is my accounting all off, but I feel slightly less accomplished.