If Lent were put before a focus group, I’m not sure that the feedback would be encouraging. A season touched by reflections on mortality doesn’t sound too appealing.
Yet Lent endures, especially here in heavily Catholic south Louisiana, where the homely black crosses on many foreheads recently proclaimed the arrival of Ash Wednesday. Those ashes, smudged atop the faces of the faithful, are meant as a reminder that we’ll all return to dust someday.
Not an especially pleasant topic, to be sure — though one that, given the right frame of mind, can even manage to yield liberating insights.
Or so I was reminded last year when I read a Washington Post op-ed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright published shortly after her death. It had been adapted from some thoughts Albright had shared in introducing one of her books.
Albright discussed how the old cemeteries in her home city of Washington, D.C. had informed her life and work. Headstones from long ago reveal the frequent brevity of life in the days when medical care was very limited. For Albright, the markers were a reminder that even today, in many parts of the world, life expectancy is still quite low. Her key point was that because life is such a precious gift, it’s our privilege — and obligation — to make the most of it. As she put it, “it is shaming to see how frivolously we who still draw breath use many of the hours God gives us.”
Albright’s words resonated with me because, some time ago, I’d spent a season or two in the world of the 19th century as I researched a small book about John James Audubon. Like so many people back then, the famous bird artist had suffered the early loss of loved ones. During his time in Louisiana, when he was summoned to the bed of a dying neighbor, Audubon thought darkly about the presence of “the hawk that poises in the air,” a pretty powerful symbol of mortality.
That all came back to mind a few weeks ago as I drove to Natchez on a cold, gray afternoon to give a small talk about Audubon. Along the highway throughout the drive, red-tailed hawks rode the wind currents, obviously on the hunt. I couldn’t help thinking about Audubon and his somber musings.
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