Preparing for Lent - or not
I won't be ignoring Lent, but I can't decide how to do Lent this year. A local church Lent challenge is to go deeper with God and grow in discipleship. That's a useful big umbrella idea. I have bought a Lent book, Stephen Cherry's 'Barefoot Prayers' which has a meditation a day for Lent and Easter. I have started to use that as the first meditation was for yesterday, but I only remembered that today so I am already behind. Will I continue or not?
If you are as undecided as me but have an urge to do something for Lent here are some links which may help:
What is Lent? This is a short post by Bosco Peters from New Zealand with useful links to other posts.
40 days, 40 acts of generosity is a UK based Lent challenge you can join up with.
Count Your Blessings this Lent is from Christian Aid. I've followed this in previous years and found it helpful.
Live the Challenge is an opportunity to take a fresh look at life this Lent. It is from St Albans Diocese (UK).
On the other hand if your life is too full of 'should' then giving yourself permission to do nothing for Lent might be a really good thing - or at least to do nothing for some time every day. What do you think?
Image Credit: Judean Desert, file at Wikimedia Commons
Like you Nancy, I have made no decision about Lent this year. I shall of course give up the more self-indulgent luxury type foods as usual, but think I need to do something more positive.
ReplyDeleteI have a tendency to make judgements on very little evidence about people and situations, maybe that is something I could actively address.
While not being too keen on the self-flagellation idea, I still think facing our/my less pleasant attributes is worth some work.
Aiming too high is bound to end in failure so a daily attempt at some self improvement might be possible.
Hope you find the best way for you this Lent Ray.
DeleteI'm another who is approaching Lent unprepared, so you're not alone, Nancy. Thanks for the suggestions. One of the things I'm looking at is being more disciplined in my use of time. Two lots of convalescence in 4 months have made me rather too lazy and self-indulgent, so i've a lot of time-wasters to give up for Lent.
ReplyDeleteIs it lazy to convalesce? Surely essential at times? Especially for those of us who were brought up to be busy. I think I need to learn how to waste time better in retirement. If you can't waste time then, when can you?
DeleteA fair point, Nancy, but there comes a time when life has to start up again. I'm really very good at relaxing after nearly 7 years of retirement, but am ready to be a bit busy for a while now. :-)
DeleteThank you for your reflections Nancy. I have to confess I don't normally give things up for Lent, but before reading your post, I was thinking on similar lines to Ray and Perpetua - being more disciplined in using time, and not leaping to judgement so quickly. Latter follows reading Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Now there's a challenging book to read in Lent!
ReplyDeleteI summarised the part about making instant judgements here: http://www.anneborrowdale.co.uk/rogue-elephant/ - if it's permissible to share the link?
Having just read the post you link to Anne, I think that sounds like an interesting book.
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