It’s Tuesday, February 17. This year, it is a day of celebration across many traditions and across vast expanses of this old earth. Chinese Lunar New Year begins today: it is the year of the Fire Horse. Ramadan is expected to begin this evening, if the new moon is seen in the sky, and it is expected to make its appearance tonight. And in this house, it is Shrove Tuesday: the final day of the Carnival Season: Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday: it is the night we have pancakes for supper. Tomorrow, when we rise, it will be Ash Wednesday. The Lenten Season will have begun: forty days of reflection and of abstaining, best we can, from excess. But that is not today. Shrove Tuesday is the day we use up all the provisions in the larder that we traditionally would not consume during the Lenten fast.
From the time when I was a boy, Lent meant no meat on Fridays, which, let’s face it, is not much to give up. In earlier times, though, the restrictions on food during Lent were quite extensive, and not just on Fridays, but all the days of Lent: no eggs, no meat, no lard, no milk, no cheese, no sugar… not much of anything truly enjoyable. Beans and pulses and vegetables and fish were acceptable, but not much else was on the table this time of year.
Sacrifice is not something we often think of, especially in this day and age, when we can find pretty much anything we want, whenever we want it. Fresh cherries in February? No problem, they’ve been flown here to your local supermarket from Argentina’s warm summer days. A slice of cheesecake from a bakery in New York flown overnight to you in Albuquerque? Also no problem. There’s no real need to eat seasonally, if you don’t want to, and if you’ve got the do-re-mi, you can get anything your heart desires delivered to your doorstep. The value of Lent, though, is that restraint is encouraged, and this idea that perhaps we should not have anything we want, whenever we want it, is, perhaps, a worthy quality, and one we should be mindful of at least every now and then. This is Lent. Lent is that reminder to be mindful.
It is also a good reminder to be kind, and respectful, and compassionate, because Lent is also a good reminder that we each are dust and to dust we shall return. Each of us. You and me in our comfortable houses. The kid who lives under the overpass. The immigrant trying to make it here and send a few bucks to the family back in the old country. The ones who get deported. The childish, disrespectful, grifting power-hungry blowhard in the White House. I don’t like calling people names, but come on: I can’t think of anyone I’d least like to be trapped in an elevator with. We all are dust and to dust we shall return. In the space between, why not just be kind and compassionate and honest and respectful to the other pilgrims in this world? As Father Seamus would recite, from memory, standing before the congregation, fingers grasping the sleeves of his vestments:
Lord, I believe in you: increase my faith.
I trust in you: strengthen my trust.
I love you: let me love you more and more.
I am sorry for my sins: deepen my sorrow.
I worship you as my first beginning,
I long for you as my last end,
I praise you as my constant helper,
And call on you as my loving protector.
I want to do what you ask of me:
In the way you ask,
For as long as you ask,
Because you ask it.
Let me love you, my Lord and my God,
And see myself as I really am:
A pilgrim in this world,
A Christian called to respect and love
All whose lives I touch.
This, to me, sums things up nicely. It is a good blueprint for a firm foundation, a good roadmap for our journey, whether we are Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Pagan or Agnostic or any thing we are. Change the words and make it right for you: Let me see myself as I really am: A pilgrim in this world, called to respect and love all whose lives I touch.
Anyway, I will think of these things tonight as we light the candles at our table and sit down to pancakes for our supper. And I will think of all of you, and wish only good things for you. We are all the same. We are all dust and to dust we shall return. That dust, mind you, came from the stars. It is some brilliant stuff.
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N.B.: The original Convivio Book of Days calendar for February 2026 mistakenly placed the start of Ramadan at February 28… which, of course, was the date of the start of Ramadan in 2025. I’m still having trouble remembering it’s 2026. I’ve since updated the February calendar with the correct date for the start of Ramadan. Click here for that corrected calendar.
Image: Cosmic dust in our Milky Way Galaxy, as photographed by NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This cosmic dust is a concentration of elements that are responsible for the formation of stars in our galaxy and throughout the universe. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
THIS WEEKEND at the SHOP
It’s Street Painting Festival time here in Lake Worth! If you’re coming to Lake Worth Beach for the event this Saturday and Sunday, why not make a little detour on your way in or out of town to come visit us at Convivio Bookworks? We’ll be open on Saturday, February 21, from 11 AM to 4 PM, and on Sunday, February 22, from 1 to 4 PM. We’ll be serving homemade Italian sweet treats and our own Löfbergs Swedish Coffee while you shop. Earlier on Sunday, we’ll be teaching a Convivio Cookery workshop: Come learn something new (and get your dinner ready while you’re at it) at our Mambricoli Pasta Making workshop on Sunday from 11 AM to 1 PM. So delicious and so easy! CLICK HERE for details and registration and to see what else is new at our Workshops page. And come see us at the Midnight Sun Festival! We’ll have a pop-up shop there on Friday, February 27, Saturday, February 28, and Sunday, March 1. This festival celebrating Finnish and Scandinavian culture is held annually at Bryant Park, on the Lake Worth Lagoon in Downtown Lake Worth Beach.
