Lenten Practice

Every year I try to establish some kind of Lenten discipline. This year, in particular, I'm welcoming Lent with special gratitude. It feels like exactly the right season at exactly the right time.

Today's quote from my church's compilation booklet of daily Lenten readings:

Perhaps this word 'surrender' should be enough for my prayer on this Ash Wednesday. Not the surrender of submission to an enemy, but the opposite, the laying down of resistance to the One who loves me infinitely more than I can guess, the One who is more on my side than I am myself. Dwelling on this thought of letting go and handing myself over to the Spirit will bring me much closer to the experience of Jesus than the work 'discipline' which so many of us have been trained to invoke at the beginning of Lent. It should help us smile at our anxious attempts to bring our life under control, the belt-tightening resolutions about giving up this or taking on that. What we are called to give up in Lent is control itself.

—Martin Smith, A Season for the Spirit: Readings for the Days of Lent

Having said that, there are a few things that I'm committing to do daily and mindfully. (And I just realized that I already forgot one of them. D'oh! Good habits are as hard to form as bad ones are to break.)

May we experience a deep and challenging forty days.

Free at Last!

Thank god almighty, I'm free at last!

The gig's up.

And there was dancing and merriment in the streets, as the peons celebrated their liberation from the cruel overlords!

And they partied until they realized that they still had to pay rent, and taxes, and doctor's bills...

And then they went on to the next job.