From the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church USA,
. . . The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. . .
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.
Growing up in the Episcopal Church, as well as attending Catholic schools, there was a focus on giving things up during Lent. For a child, this usually meant something like giving up sweets, most usually, chocolate. Later, my children also attended Catholic school, and we were once again drawn into that popular practice of giving things up during Lent. One year, my daughter decided to give up television, which I must say was not at all popular with her father and brother who moaned that it wasn’t fair that they were effectively forced to give it up as well since you couldn’t very well watch TV without her seeing it. Later, when she was a little older, she gave up desserts. It was interesting when we went out for my birthday and the waitress did a hard-sell on her to get dessert along with me – clearly she didn’t know my daughter, she’s not one to go back on a commitment, so while my son and I enjoyed our French crepes, she just watched us. When I gave up alcohol two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised how helpful the Europeans are when you tell them that you’re doing something for Lent – especially in Poland, where as soon as I told them that I was abstaining during Lent, the wine menu disappeared from our table at the restaurant.
As an adult, years ago, at an Ash Wednesday services when the text above was read out, the presiding priest pointed out to us that Lent isn’t all about giving things up – there is also the charge to take things on. His point was that instead of focusing on something like chocolate that you’ll immediately take back up again on Easter Sunday when you dive into the chocolate bunnies, it was better to actually look at doing something additional, going above and beyond by reading and meditating on God’s holy word, maybe doing charity work, etc. That made an impression on me, and since then, I’ve tried to do both – give up something as well as taking something on.
For this year, I set rather a high bar, but here’s what I decided:
Giving up:
- Social media (specifically Facebook and Instagram) – I ended up deciding to keep up with LinkedIn, but only because I’ve been using it for work and needed to continue to be able to network in order to support my own work as well as wider recruitment efforts for my company.
- Alcohol – I’ve done this before. My BFF and her husband do this every Lent, and two years ago, I decided to do it myself. One of the underlying reasons why I decided to do it the first time is that my father was an alcoholic. While I don’t believe that my enjoyment of things like wine, whisky and gin are anywhere near being an addiction, the fact that I can stop any time (without ill side-effects or any particular stress) is comforting reinforcement to me.
- Meat – I have many vegetarian friends and have heard all the various arguments about the benefits of giving up meat. In this case, I decided that I would continue to eat fish during Lent, so some may say that I haven’t gone fully vegetarian.
Taking On:
- Praying the Anglican rosary (prayer beads) every night (see https://www.fullcirclebeads.com/pages/symbolism for an explanation of this style of prayer beads)
- Attending workshops and retreats sponsored by Contemplative Outreach Chicago (see https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/ for more about this practice).
- Knitting a prayer shawl for my church to distribute to those in need of being wrapped in prayer (see https://www.shawlministry.com/ for a lovely overview of this ministry).
This blog is about how it’s going. I’ve written it weekly, so we’ll go Wednesday by Wednesday.
Week 1 – Ash Wednesday (March 6) to the first Wednesday (March 13)
- Social Media – it was a bit strange not to do my usual practice of checking Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and my email in the mornings, and periodically throughout the day. I logged out of the Facebook App on Tuesday night, so I’m not getting any notifications. I chose this route rather than suspending my account, so it really only means that I use the Messenger App on my phone, and I don’t bring up that website at all on my laptop. Besides having to stop myself from autopilot in the mornings, it hasn’t been that terribly difficult. I’ve had a few, ‘oh, I should share this’ moments, but they pass.
Instagram has been a bit different since I didn’t log out and the little notification number keeps getting larger on my iPhone. My home-screen on my iPhone puts up little messages as well when someone likes one of my photos or has started following me. I’ve successfully avoided reading them, and just swipe left to clear the messages.
As a result of not being on social media, I’ve begun to spend more time on the BBC and Al Jazeera news Apps in order to get more up to date on what’s going on in the world. The US news is so completely focused on the latest antics of Trump that I’m finding it hard to know what’s really happening in the world. I’ve always been partial to the BBC, but a friend recently recommended Al Jazeera, so I’ve been reading that as well. It’s very interesting to see the different perspectives (though they aren’t that diametrically opposed).
As you may notice, I’m also spending a lot of time working on my blog posts and trying to develop this site. My work is getting more busy, so I may need to step back a bit, but I wrote enough during this week that I’ll have plenty to post over the next several weeks.
- Alcohol – this has actually been easier than the first time I did it since I had decided to do ‘dry January’ this year, and that was only a couple months ago. I was a little tempted when one of the recipes I made called for white wine in a sauce and I had to open a new bottle. However, I resisted and corked the bottle for the Fridge (and to enjoy after Easter).
- Meat – before Lent started, I used a couple websites to load up on vegetarian recipes. I ended up having to shop at Whole Foods since I was pretty certain that some of the more gourmet ingredients wouldn’t be available at my local Jewel Osco store. I had to ignore where the veggies come from, since you can be sure that things like Eggplant aren’t growing anywhere near the Midwest at this time of year, and will have traveled very far to get to Chicago’s North Shore. I’m finding that the recipes are quite involved, require a big mess in the kitchen and can be fairly complicated to prepare (meaning they take a lot of time). So far, they’ve all been delicious, but messy. I’m also finding that I’m eating fish more often than I had planned. This is mostly because I don’t find the all-vegetable dishes to be that filling. One night, I broke down and stopped for sushi for dinner on the way home from work – while I missed having a Kirin beer with it, it was delicious! I also went to a Farm style restaurant in Evanston before a concert the first Friday, and had some great fish. I successfully resisted the temptation of having one of their locally brewed beers. I’ll go back again after Easter since they had a really interesting beer list.
- Anglican rosary – oddly, the challenge here is that I’ve been getting the prayers from a Facebook group for this style prayer beads. Since I’m off Facebook for the season, I started with using the Psalms from Ash Wednesday. Thankfully, both were quite long (Psalm 51 and 103), so I’ve been able to get the necessary prayers for the Cruciform and Week beads, plus prayers from the service for the Invitatory bead and cross, without having to repeat the same ones every night. I’ve been doing pretty well on this, except for one night when I got home very late (after the concert in Evanston) and just went to sleep.
- Contemplative Outreach Chicago – fortunately, this group has scheduled two full-day workshops that happen to fall during Lent. The first one was led by Rabbi Rami Shapiro (author, teacher, and speaker on the subjects of liberal Judaism and contemporary spirituality, as well as the Kabbalah tradition within Judaism). The talk was based on his recent book, The Divine Feminine in Biblical Wisdom Literature, and filled with great insights. I had a really interesting conversation with him over lunch, and later found that he’s leading a retreat weekend in September at St. Mary’s Convent in Sewanee, TN (so, naturally, I’m going to that now). While he gave the Jewish perspective, the whole discussion of Jesus as the manifestation of God on earth, and Mary as the manifestation of Sophia (wisdom) and the mother of all creation was so intriguing. I’m afraid that some of the audience who were more traditional Roman Catholics struggled with the Bible as metaphor concepts, but I loved it!
- Knitting – I’ve started a new prayer shawl, which is a little more complicated than what I usually do. Since I don’t have a TV and am off social media, there’s plenty of time to knit in the evenings after work. My daughter provided the pattern and it’s an 8-row repeating pattern. So as not to get confused, I’m making sure that I knit in multiples of 8 rows each time I sit down to do it. The shawl is coming along nicely, and I’m sure that it will be finished before Easter.
So, Week 1 has come to and end, and so far, I’m doing fine.
