!Lenten uncertainty --- agk's diary 24 February 2024 @ 06:11 UTC --- written on X61, hp vf15" monitor, model m keys in kitchen, sleepily, as house sleeps --- Jesus fasted and prayed. In Gaza 700,000 starve. A couple dozen died of starvation in North Gaza in the last three months. In two weeks the Muslim ummah starts its fast and prayer. In years past to prepare for His death and resurrection Evy and I chanted psalms, prayed our way through our church's directory. I started on the psalms this year and stopped. The church we attend now has no directory. Starvation, real starvation, takes a long time. A healthy adult can live more than thirty days with no food, robbing fat from around the brain, heart, reproductive organs. With dehydration, diarrhea, chronic malnutrition, or high physiological or psychological distress it looks different. My public prayers in church for specific populations in Gaza might have been prideful grandstanding. For Lent, I pray for them silently, a small fast from the risk of pride. I'm essentially observing Lent alone this year. It feels like the Nativity was just last week, wise men arrived yesterday, and now I'm preparing for the mystery of the Passion. Where were the three years of ministry? I wonder if His mother felt this sense of foreshortened time. Our time with each other is short. Today Israel killed another 100-200 people, mostly women and children, and injured another 200-300, as it does every day. Its targeting algorithms keep daily casualties in this range. Tomorrow my country delivers another thousand 500-pound MK-82 bombs, precision guidance kits, and fuses. It only takes three to five a day to meet Israel's daily death goals. The world changes at its core every Lent; this Lent. The steadfast teach steadfastness. Death's nearness invites care for the living. God cherishes and aids the downtrodden. Among them He chooses to be born, be friends, live, and die. Promises of earthly reward from the tempter in the wilderness remain as empty as ever. In the kitchen tonight I talked to roommate in frustration about the unseriousness of [nearby city] for Palestine and the dire situation. I wish Gaza was bigger I said. The Ukraine-Russia front's long enough to consume our stocks of artillery, shells, missiles, and launch platforms; countries vast enough for noncombatants to get away from the front. Ukraine can't consume our aerial bombs because it doesn't have air supremacy. Israel doesn't need many to kill everyone in Gaza. I yelled in frustration at my daughter when she walked into the kitchen where we talked after she was supposed to be in bed. Daughter cried. Evy lay with her. To Evy she said: Mama was not a patient with me. She yelled at me. I cried. She did not understand. I don't understand how to observe Lent this year, how to be faithful, how to pray the prayer and make the fast that would be most pleasing to my God. Mama? daughter asked yesterday morning. Can you turn into a bigger woman, please?