Ruminations on Lent

[thomryng]

Quite chill outside today. It's the first day this week I've managed to get to school before the tardy bell. Not that I've fixed hours, mind, but I do like to be at my desk before the students.

This is my second Lent and my first as a Catholic, having spent last year in the catechumenate, a word that here means "a group of overwhelmed students pressed for time".

When I was young and at Catholic school, I'd see the students around me "giving up something for Lent". I always thought it was silly, truth be told, as if God was somehow going to be impressed with some poor schlepp not having candy bars for forty days.

But it's not about that. Lent is a time of re-purposing and re-dedicating. It's not about privation for the sake of privation, or some sort of self-inflicted punishment from an overdeveloped sense of guilt.

It's about clearing away the things that distract us. It's about re-focusing your self on God.

I don't think it's about giving up so much as replacing.

So yeah, I'm giving up chocolate. ;)

Many people take on new spiritual excercises or practices during Lent, or find a new fervour in practices they've let slide. For myself, I'm going to attempt daily Mass in addition to praying the Hours. We'll see how that goes. I must remember to remind myself that perfecting oneself is not nearly the same as being perfect, which is in any case impossible.

What do you, my dear reader, do for Lent? Or if you're not a Christian, how do you rededicate and renew your faith? Or if you've no faith at all, what do you do to take stock and focus your life?

Edited to add: After Mass today, we had the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Quite a surprise to me. Singing in Latin no less. Who would have thought? I really should read the schedule more often at some point.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

This year, for the first time, I'm giving up meat. I think it was being in Venice that did it, and musing on the word Carnevale. I usually give up alcohol, but I didn't find it a challenge last year.

And if it's not a challenge, why do it?

And if it's not a challenge, why do it?

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

I haven't had time to think about Lent...I guess technically mine began two weeks ago with my written exams. I think I'm going to work on taking better care of myself and resting up after running myself ragged since November.

[zator.livejournal.com]

-laughs- I am a Christian, but I dont do lent. Surprise! :)

We do a fast, though, on the first sunday of each month, although it isnt required (like many things in my faith). Normally it amounts to not eating 2 meals, and then the money that you would normally spend on those two meals gets donated as "fast offering", the bulk of which is the church's welfare fund, among other humanitarian aid.

Of course, a fast is, well, just that - going without food (which for some of us isnt a bad plan in itself). To make it meaningful, we use it as a re-focus. A lot of praying usually goes into it, and many believe they get closer to Heavenly Father because they ignore the physical needs of your body, and submit your physical body to the will of your spirit.

Also, in Sacrament Meetings on fast sunday, instead of the normal "asking people to give talks" thing that usually happens, people voluntarily get up and give their own testimonies, i.e. a precis of the things that they rely on for their faith. On a lighter note, I paraphrase a line in "Mormonism for Dummies" regarding fast and testimony meeting: "If someone seems to be a bit wonky when giving their testimony, remember they havent eaten for a couple of meals."

[volare.livejournal.com]

This is a great entry, sir. Thank you.
For me it tends to be the days leading up to Yule and the overnight vigil that serves as the major refocusing point for the year; a little different than many pagan types in that I'm not a deist in any way... no Goddess/God dynamic but more reminding myself and my family of .. having an awareness of where we are, if that makes sense. Wassailing our apple trees makes the neighbors shake their heads a little but it also reminds my daughter to respect where her food comes from; that it doesn't grow in the shelves at the supermarket.
Heh. This is the year she'll be going to different services at churches, temples, synagogues, learning the ways other people exercise their faith. Going to be interesting...

going to different services

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful idea! I suspect that "going to be interesting" is a bit of an understatement. She's going to be quite perplexed, I think, unless she gets some serious backgrounding first. May I ask your daughter's age?

Re: going to different services

[volare.livejournal.com]

She's 7. We've spent most of the last year trying to build some of the backgrounding you mention, as far as "different people believe different things"...
a lot of people tried to console her when our Mali-dog passed away back in January 2005 by telling her "she's in Heaven now" or the like, and that triggered her curiosity.

Re: going to different services

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

Very keen. Well, if you folks make it to a Mass and you've got any questions regarding more specific "what the heck was that all about" things, feel free to bug me. I might even know the answer ;)

Lenten Goodness!

[goddessbxl.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with you on the "re-directing-ness" of Lent. I see it as, wait- I see practicing one's faith at any time, as just that- practice. Communal worship is like rehearsal for improv. We get together and practice being faithful people so that we can go out into the world and more easily be the radical non-conformists we are called to be as the Body of Christ.

That said, Lent is for me a time of practicing being purposeful and intentional about my faith journey. Lent is like turning your spiritual compost. Bear in mind, I'm thinking this analogy out as I go here. So, compost. I don't know if you garden, but when you do, you've got to keep your soil cultivated. If you just keep taking from the ground without giving anything back, eventually you'll end up with nothing but dirt. Making compost takes the old, the used, the garbage from your garden and turns it back into life-giving soil.

The trick to making good compost is turning it. This is where the Lenten relevance comes in. I hope. Turning your compost is like a journey down through the layers of your trash, and you get to some pretty dark and dank and sometimes slimy places at the bottom of the pile. The good news is that now you've mixed air and water into your pile so you've killed off the anaerobic bacteria that make it smelly and slimy and nourished the good bacteria and the worms and such that break down your waste into usable goodness so that your garden can be healthy and beautiful.

Does this make any sense? I hope so, because I'm thinking of refining it and using it for the meditation at Vespers on Wednesday.

Which gets us to what I do for Lent. One of my great joys as the convener of the Worship Committee at my church has been taking our Lenten Vespers services away from our pastor and handing them over to the congregation. This means I get to co-ordinate lay leadership for five prayer services every Lent. I have had the best time with these services. I've given people structure if they want it, but let them decide where they want to take the service, and have had some of the best prayer services I've been to come out of this. a

Re: Lenten Goodness!

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

I like your metaphor.

Another thought: one doesn't turn compost every day of the year. There's a time for turning and a time to let it just do its thing.

[kingcadillac.livejournal.com]

giving up chocolate and replacing it with God. Your religion continues to confuse me. I mean, in what way had chocolate (or any other such item) interfered with your relationship with God?

Do you feel that abstaining from a material pleasure causes more access to the spiritual? And later when you start eating chocolate again, what happens then?

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

I have a photo on my wall here at work. It's a class picture, third or fourth grade, that was taken sometime during the Great Depression. It's not a particularly great composition (as you might imagine). The kids look a little ragged around the edges. Some of them are smiling, some not. Some look proud, some shy. There's a girl in the front row with enormous round glasses that take up most of her face.

I don't know any of the people in the picture.

So why have it up? Why not replace it with a Manet print or a photo montage of wombats I have known?

Because whenever I see it, my brain immediately thinks of who I'm ultimately working for: these student and their successors now and to come. It reminds me that however bad a day I'm having at school, the rhythm and life of the school will go on. No matter what weird bit of trouble crops up, it's nothing compared to what these kids lived through.

Lent is like that. We give up familliar, comfortable things in part so that our bodies remind us to look beyond ourselves. So, for example, this morning skipping my morning mocha forced me to think, for the slightest moment, about why I was doing that. For a moment when it otherwise would not have, my mind turned to God.

St. Paul tells us that we should pray constantly. Lenten fasts and assumed obligations are one tiny step towards living your life as a prayer.

The other issue is distractions, as I've already said. Clear out the clutter, and it's amazing how much focus you have. Frankly, the world would be a better place if people gave up television for Lent.

There's a lot more to it than that, obviously, but until you and I sit down with a beer and talk, it's the best I can do.

[kingcadillac.livejournal.com]

I think the world would be a better place if people gave up television altogether.

Thank you for your answer. Well said.

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

I think the world would be a better place if people gave up television altogether.

I concur.

[black-felt-hat.livejournal.com]

I remember being told (repeatedly_ that Lent was about suffering. We were supposed to give up something dear to us so that, in some small way, experience the suffering of Christ. Not really what you are talking about.

I refocus my faith by doing my morning and even recitation of a portion of the Lotus Sutra. I do this every day. In the morning I begin anew with fresh determination and hope. In the evening, I review, express apreciation and renew my determination. Whenever I am overwhelmed, I read the words of Nichiren, which never fail to touch my life and inspire me to start again.

[black-felt-hat.livejournal.com]

wow I wish I had a nickel for every type-o in that sentence.

correction:
(repeatedly)
so that, in some small way, we would experience

I've got to start going to bed on time.

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

I think the "suffering" aspect is valid, but it's only part of the puzzle. Lent is to prepare us for the Easter mysteries. Since they're mysteries and all, there are a lot of ways to look at that period of preparation. It's meant, I think, to emulate Christ's forty days in the desert before the events that led up to the crucifixion.

As for daily renewal... there are obviously those things in Roman Catholicism too, but sometimes (speaking just for me, mind you) I tend to fall into a routine, where maybe I'm not in the moment as I should be when, for example, I pray the Hours in the morning or at night. I'm grateful that we've a season where our routines are shaken up a bit and we're expected to do more (I suppose the bishops would say "called to renewal").

In addition to your daily recitations and appreciations, do you folks have some sort of seasonal or annual thing?

[sistermeg.livejournal.com]

no drinking :( no snacking - three modest meals a day. try not to talk shit about people. Try to say more positive things than negative. Attend daily mass more frequently and pray at least one Hour. (not like, 60 minutes hour, like lauds or none or compline hours)

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

All good things, methinks.

I too pray the Hours. Sadly, I tend to fall down a lot. Mostly I pray the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer (during my bus commute), and our parish Benedictine group prays Evening Prayer on Monday nights in community.

As part of my Lenten observence, I'm trying to remember to pray Night Prayer before bed. So far, I'm two for two, but the season is young...

Do you pray the hours by yourself or in community?

(And why do I insist on capitalizing things I oughtn't to? Must be the German in me.)

[queen-in-autumn.livejournal.com]

I like what you've written here about "replacing".

I don't know if you've had the time to read, but my journey has been all about rededication and renewal recently, and even though I've never done Lenten observance, my process seemed to coincide all too well this year.

In addition to the 15 minutes I've set my morning alarm back to give me more time to devote to a brand-new meditation practice, I've also un-installed a particularly compulsive and mind-numbing computer solitaire game than can suck my brain out for an hour at a time before I realize what's happening.

And will you and the lovely jaynefury be available at any time for a party at my house on March 25 or 26? See my March 2 entry for details.

[vonjunzt.livejournal.com]

I think giving something up really does help you refocus. Every time you feel that pang it helps remind you of God.

I've given up everything from caffine (which I have trouble doing now, as it would hurt my school performace) to alchol. This lent I'm reading a chapter from the New and the Old Testaments every day. I'm also ironically trying to eat more and better than I'm used to eating -- I realized that getting to the point where one eats two small meals (and I use the term loosely) or even just one meal a day probably isn't what God had in mind for one's body. So hopefully I'll start treating both myself and others with more respect now.

[chordam7.livejournal.com]

i used to do lent when i was a youngun but after i got out in the real world i spent so much time doing without so many things, including food on a couple of brief but memorable occasions, that eventually, i gave up lent for lent....

much like love is christmas every day, poverty is lent way too often!

; )

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, yeah. Amen.

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

I spend a lot of time weighing the values of various things to myself and the world every day. Should I give up hot running water for Lent? That would make me suffer. What would the world gain by my suffering that much? Not enough.

I can't give up meat for physical reasons. Not that I couldn't aesthetically; but what would the world gain by my disability?

So what suffering could I experience that would better the world?

What practices to better the world could I adopt? Seems a better question. I'll hunt through my faults for the most glaring one, and whack at it.

Thanks, Thom.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I can describe, procedurally, how I rededicate and renew my faith.

I know I do. :-)

It almost always involves movement and travel. It almost always involves writing poetry, though usually that is the side effect, not the cause. It often involves performance: opening up myself as a channel to some kind of beauty or meaning, or simply taking on an aspect unfamiliar to my previous wanderings.

You and jaynefury have been connected to several segments of my life where I have done this thing, and youse've influenced them in some measure, for which I feel nothing but fortunate. :-)

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

It almost always involves movement and travel.

I'm sure you're not surprised to learn that this method is deeply ingrained in my faith as well. Not all pilgrimages are to someplace else, however. Sometimes the most profound pilgrimages are the interior pilgrimages. You can cover a lot of ground exploring the depths of your own heart.

Just now, I miss talking with you.

[amberite.livejournal.com]

Yes.