Can I use the holy water too?

Last Wednesday at about 3 o’clock, I walking through campus to my afternoon class, and a girl walked past me with ashes smeared across her forehead. I don’t know if anyone else found this to be odd, but I certainly did not. In fact I was a little surprised I hadn’t seen more of it. You see, in Bisbee I was the oddball; the one walking around without the ashes on my forehead.

Growing up in a border town means growing up with a lot of Mexicans, and that means growing up with a lot of Catholics, which I am not. This meant that I was excluded from many of the things that most of my peers were involved in, like Ash Wednesday. By the time I reached high school, that didn’t bother me at all. But as a young adolescent, trying to fit in with my friends, I just wanted to be like everyone else, and in Bisbee that meant being Catholic.

Think back to when you were in elementary school and junior high. If all of your friends wore polka dot shoes laces, you wanted to too. If all of your friends wanted to dye their hair neon colors, you wanted to too. All of my friends wore gold crosses and I wanted to too.

Being baptized, going to St. Patrick’s every Sunday, going to Catechism after school, buying beautiful, frilly dresses for first communion; my not being Catholic continually kept me from fitting in. After Saturday night sleepovers at my best friend Christina’s house, I would wake up to her family getting ready for church. Christina and I spent the majority of our childhoods together, which meant we were both included in the other’s family events, like going to church. So I went. But I always felt out of place. As everyone in the church stood to take communion, I would sit. My friends and members of my community would all walk past me and quite honestly I felt guilty, like I had done something wrong.

So as that girl walked by me on campus, it got me thinking about Ash Wednesday and Lent when I was in high school. I was one of the few who didn’t give something up for the 40 days prior to Easter. I was one of the few who still ate meat on Fridays*. I was one of the few who wasn't Catholic.

I made momentary eye contact with that girl as she passed by and I think she may have felt like I used to- like the minority.

The pictures in this blog are from:
http://vineyardmen.typepad.com/men_of_the_vineyard/images/ash_wednesday.jpg
http://www.arnettslaboutique.com


*Our cafeteria actually stopped serving meat on Friday during Lent – Now that I think about that, it seems a little odd. Aren’t church and state supposed to be separate? Why would a public school cafeteria not serve meat on Friday during Lent?