Ashes on a sackcloth banner. Nail pins on the lapel. Refusing to sing Alleluias. Stripping of the altar.

There is a note of sobriety and somberness about the Lenten season. And that is as it should be. The liturgical silences and the somber worship of Lent serve to underscore the profound tragedy of our sin and the awesome penalty that sin exacted: the very death of God!

In the center of the crowd gathered on Golgotha’s hill, two burly Roman soldiers hold Jesus’ arms to the rough wooden beam. Another holds His legs. The beams are being reused and so they are already stained with dried blood.

A few years ago, my family sat down to watch the movie “Marley and Me.” The movie is about how John and Jenny Grogan, a newly married couple, adopt a yellow Labrador retriever puppy in order to see if the couple is ready to become parents. They name the puppy after the reggae singer, Bob Marley.

You may have heard the story of how Canning, two weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, moved out of her New Jersey parents’ home. Canning had moved in to her best friend’s home and with the financial support of her friend’s parents, sued her own parents for financial support. 

Comedian Paul Reiser wrote once about mother’s spit: “I saw a kid who had some dried-up food on his face. His mother took out a tissue, spit on the tissue and rubbed it into the kid’s face. This goes on, in communities around our country, on a daily basis. It is disgusting, but it sure does work, doesn’t it? There’s something in Mother Saliva that cleans like nobody’s business. 

As an adult, you can look back at certain events in your childhood and remember them with complete clarity. And yet, some of the particulars surrounding those events may be a bit foggy, so in retelling your childhood, you fill in the gaps with exaggeration and embellishment.

Have you ever lived in a tent while in the military? Or slept in a tent for the weekend while camping? Or set up your tent in the backyard for you and your little kids in the summer? It’s not very nice, really. 

Early on a summer morning two years ago, I woke up and started my day as usual. But before long, I started to not feel so well. Then suddenly, I was doubled over in pain on my hands and knees. Something on my right side felt like it was killing me – literally. 

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” Those are the words of Alice to her cat, Dinah, in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.  Wonderland is most certainly an upside-down, inside-out, topsy-turvy world.