AS DIFFICULT AS it is to learn to trust a mentor, it is even more arduous to break down our self suspicion. Do we have what it takes to break free of the entanglements of the Dark Wood - to melt with feeling-intellect the icy encrustations of Hell that keep us paralyzed in our self defeating patterns? We stare eyeball to eyeball at the antagonist within, sizing up our character and our chances of restoration.
My first encounter of Ash Wednesday was while I had a job at St. Joseph's Vocational School in Winnipeg. Being the only Protestant working there, I was shocked, even somewhat horrified, and leery to ask why every student and our teacher Irene Coulter had a black, cross-like smudge on their foreheads as they entered room. Choosing not to see it as a weird hallucination, I decided to ask what those smudges were about. Irene, a none-too-observant Catholic, gave me the formal answer, "Ash Wednesday is the day that kicks off Lent, a run up to Easter for Catholics." "Okay," I