Well, here we are, firmly ensconced within the Season of Lent.

And here we begin again our annual conversation regarding sacrifice and fasting.

This conversation usually starts on the way home from receiving ashes. The kids all compare their ash-centered foreheads to see who received more.

Can’t we shelve it for a Holy Day, for God’s sake?

Apparently not.

One son realizes his ashes were applied too high on his forehead and no one can see them with his bangs covering them.

What a buzz kill, he thinks.

My other son said he gets the bigger pile of ashes applied to his very milky forehead (he takes after my Elmer’s glue-hued complexion) so that must mean he is a better child. He shines brighter in God’s eyes, I guess, while his younger brother does not. That’s his story and he is sticking to it.

The.

Entire.

Way.

Home.

To dilute the stupidity of this conversation and bring it back to the topic of Lent itself, we start to discuss what, in fact, we will all “give up” for Lent. I really wish I had filmed this entire dissertation, because you wouldn’t believe it unless you were sitting in the back seat with these two little anti-altar boys.

Here is how the conversation played out:

Me: “Okay, boys. The point is to stop doing something you might otherwise enjoy often. You need to feel a little pain when you give-up something for Lent. That’s the point. For example, not playing that stupid Xbox is the perfect sacrifice.”

Patrick: “MOM! God does NOT want me to give up my Xbox for 40 days! Are you kidding me? It just got fixed! I haven’t played it in like, forever, and now you want me to give it up again??? No way! Can’t I just use the time when it was broken and apply it to this whole Lent thing? You know, like convicts get ‘time served’ tacked-onto their jail time? Like that! Wouldn’t you-know-who agree to that?”

Me: “You’re joking, right? Where have I gone wrong?”

Him: “Well, you always laugh at everything I say, so maybe that’s where you started going wrong …”

Me: “You need to give-up ice cream then. You love ice cream.”

Him: “Hmmm. How about I give-up ice cream with nuts and cherries?”

Me: “You hate ice cream with nuts and cherries.”

Him: “Exactly.”

Me: “Kids! Seriously! You’re missing the significance here. You need to really get this. You don’t rotate the rules of Lent around your own schedule of likes and dislikes. Do you really not understand?!”

Him: “Well, Toots – what will YOU be giving up for Lent?”

Me: “None of you business. I have it worked out between myself and the big guy and, trust me, it is a better theme than what you’ve got going.”

From the back seat my oldest son pipes up and informs me that due to his wrestling schedule and his 103 lb. weight class, he has already given up solid foods, sugar, salt, high fructose corn syrup and potatoes … so since he’s subsisting on air and ice, it appears that there will be no further fasting for him.

“Besides,” he informed me, “I think God will understand what a wrestler’s gotta do. He totally gets my sacrifice for the wrestling team, Mom.”

Oh, someone please help me.

Here is what I think:

Catholic or not, Lenten season or a regular Wednesday in the middle of the month, a child should be raised to acknowledge when they all have too, too much.

Giving up something they hold dear is just part of the entire worldly equation.

We need to make our children aware of the fact that – in light of the recent Haiti catastrophe, for example – or even the fires in our own town, our children are “thing hogs”. They just want and want until they choke on their own possessions.

It’s grotesque.

I’m not embarrassed to admit that I use Lent to get this message across but I fear my anthem cannot penetrate the cages housing the animals I created.

My daughter recently had to complete a project for an Environment Resource class at PSU. The assignment called for her to go through every possession in her dorm room and on a very official spread sheet, notate these items. She sent it to me and my jaw dropped.

Who the hell needs 31 rings? 31! Rings! And 40 pairs of flip flops?

Seriously? That rubber can be melted down to make tires for like, 14 Jeeps in Afghanistan!

She has ascertained, based on the typed evidence of such excess, that she has much too much of everything. She can safely live on say, 1/16 of the items displayed in all their overabundance upon her spread sheet of surplus.

We all can!

The point is whether it is the Season of Lent, Hunting Season or the Season of Nothing, the generation of our hedonistic little monsters needs to pare down and take a look out what is really essential.

Love is essential. iPods are not.

The lesson is this: purge a little, sacrifice a lot, give-up something important, give-away what you really do not need.

And stop comparing your ashes.

About the Author

Maria Heck covers for the Times Leader. Reach her at or .

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