Lent!
I can’t believe it’s time for Lent again. Again. Again.
As you know, this is when we listen to a lovely rendition of Ave Maria (as well as something somewhat less timeless) and, in recent years, discuss what we’re giving up for Lent.
In years past, this has been an opportunity for me and Maribou to go out to the IHOP and discuss the prior year and talk about the coming year.
Well… we had IHOP delivered instead. But we sat and talked about the past year and stuff we did well and stuff we accomplished and stuff we overcame and, jeez louise, how is it almost March? It was *JUST* March!
The big thing that we noticed was, on all of our measurables, we did *GREAT*. We passed a silly arbitrary number for how much we still owed on the house and that made us do a little dance. I re-learned how to cook. She mastered her craft at her job and is able to do about 98% of it from home as well as a few percentage points from her co-workers who still go in (which makes it easier for them to pick up her little points here or there). We mastered living together under one roof and the other person being the only one we really see and really talk to.
I mean, we weren’t living exceptionally dramatic lives or anything like that but, in years past, I’d say that our biggest problems were acute ones. This last year wasn’t particularly acute at all. It was chronic. All year long. And months ahead. But we got kinda good at it.
So when it comes to “what are you going to give up for Lent?”, for me, the question is “what *HAVEN’T* you given up?” Jeez, I’ve given up rock climbing, Saturday night gaming, travelling further than a drive up to Cascade (not even getting out of the car! Just driving up there and turning around!), eating out with friends, eating at home with friends, cooking for people who aren’t my spouse or my mom, and hugging people that I haven’t cooked for recently. What am I giving up for Lent?
Well, I’m going to do Metamucil every day, I guess. That’ll be something I can do without feeling like I’m not sacrificing something that is keeping me on the tightrope. The stuff that it’ll enable me to let go of is stuff I probably shouldn’t be holding onto so tightly.
And *NEXT* year will be the year that will be normal enough to give something up without thinking that doing so would tipple topple everything.
(And I need another “Oh, I remember that song!” song for the post… here’s one.)
So… what are you giving up for Lent? Or, at least, meditating on?
Going to try my recent usual routine, no alcohol, no sweets.
Also going to fast from Twitter, but Ramadan rules – just stay off it during the day (and sunrise to sunset is good enough this time a year for ‘during the day’)Report
Ooooh, Ramadan Rules… that’s an interesting idea. I may need to explore that.
For next year, I mean.Report
Facebook is officially uninstalled. I despise it and yet hesitated for a moment before making the tap, which was a sure sign I made the right choice. May it burn in hell.Report
Indeed.Report
It was a positive thing for me, mentally, certainly. If you do not use one, spending a little time putting together an RSS reader (like feedly) which can provide a central hub for blogs and such without the constant call and response chatter of social media is a decent middle ground. I kind of think if it a newspaper where the editors are various people / blogs that I subscribe to.Report
I’m pretty good about keeping up with the blogs and news I follow. It’s more that FB (and all social media) makes it much harder for me to love my fellow man, including (especially?) those friends and family for whom it should be easiest.Report
Yeah, I have recently gotten back into facebook and the best parts are the friends who are just posting clips of this or that monthly challenge they’re doing. (Hey, 50 pushups a day! He went from 10 5 times to 50 at once! Yeah, buddy!)
The worst parts are the “I do not believe X and I cannot understand how someone else could possibly believe X!” posts that are about Xes that are, like, exceptionally common.
We’re not talking about a niche X.
We’re in “I don’t understand how someone could enjoy 70’s country music” territory.
Maybe my tastes are just too rarified these days…Report
This is my issue. It’s not even just the politics. It’s the insufferable righteousness and self-absorbed-ness around the most petty stuff imaginable. When it’s causing me to be angry at a friend I’ve known for decades and who I am otherwise genuinely sad I didn’t get to see over the holidays due to covid it is a serious problem. My life is poorer because of it and no amount of hilarious memes can make up the lost ground.Report
The fight that got me off Facebook a million years ago was about universal college. Someone argued for universal college. I responded with something like “that’ll turn into grades 13-16”.
The response was “YOU’RE SAYING THAT THESE PEOPLE DO NOT DESERVE AN EDUCATION” and…
Well, I guess I got used to arguing with people who were used to arguing with other people.Report
Oh yea I’d never touch that. I’ve had a ‘do not post or engage’ policy about anything with an even remotely political dimension for years. Seems like best practice when letting something like my favorite dollar menu combination
slip out could get me keelhauled.Report
“I like to eat the ears off the chocolate bunny first!”
“MUST BE NICE TO NOT HAVE A NUT ALLERGY”Report
Exactly.Report
As I said in the other post, there are people who just don’t get that Online is Real, who think that Typing It Into Facebook means it’s not something that real people who they know personally will ever see. Like, “you saw that boomer meme? what, that was ONLINE, that was FACEBOOK, you’re not seriously mad at me about it?”Report
Easier to just withdraw.Report
I deleted FB a few years ago too… same reasons, really.
For the friends/family updates, Instagram (still Facebook property) works better… pictures no words.
Hey… there’s so-and-so’s new baby… how cute… Wow, Aunt M is in Burma? huh.
As long as you don’t use it for trends or culture… don’t follow any ‘influencers’ then it turns out the things we hate are the words… we hate the words of our fellow man.Report
My wife has done that and she also likes it much better. Maybe I’ll give it a shot after Easter. Seems like it would be cheating to try now.Report
Not being religious or culturally religious, I don’t give up stuff for Lent. Hell, I didn’t even know it was happening.
However, I’ve been to two restaurants in about a year-not including delivery and take out. I’ve given up hanging out with friends at a bar, and no in person gaming. Otherwise, all’s the same. ?Been going to the gym doing jujitsu for 8+ months, not been into the office in over a year….Ought to get my purple belt by EOY.Report
I dunno. I feel like March 13 2020 until now was one long Lent for me – I gave up restaurant meals, I gave up nearly all in-person shopping other than for groceries, I gave up traveling, I gave up seeing most of my friends (and the few I did see, it was from a distance with both of us in a mask).
I feel like….God, I need this year not to add another thing to give up. Or to take on. Teaching with the added online component (for people who are medically-fragile, or have medically-fragile housemates or childcare issues) has not quite doubled my cognitive load.
I could give up sweets and I would probably benefit healthwise from that. But I also do badly with a blanket “give it all up” thing (even with the “Sundays don’t count in Lent” rule that a friend told me about a few years ago). Same with “all unnecessary shopping” (have done that a few years and then donated the money I didn’t spend to an anti-poverty charity). Last year I was going to do “no online shopping” but LOL that didn’t work out so well when we all got sent home to stay.
Also my birthday falls a week after this Saturday and, being 2 weeks out from my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, I actually feel like it might be safe to go out (still masked and distanced) to the JoAnn’s and the bookstore. And maybe pick up a slice of cake from a bakery while I’m out? So I dunno. Maybe this year I take a pass, considering how hard I found 2020?
I suppose I could ban myself from watching or reading news, but….Report
Yeah, my original tagline for the post was “It doesn’t feel like it’s almost Lent. It feels like it’s still Lent.”
Fingers crossed for Easter.
Maybe in July.Report
I take your point about feeling a little bit ‘stretched too thin’ … I’ll continue a practice I learned from some religious brothers living in community… rather than giving something up – which you still contemplate in it’s glorious goodness – consider a small irritant as more of a constant reminder. For the heroic that might be a hair shirt… for the likes of me it’s making my coffee all wrong… every day… each cup.
On the positive side, will engage in what my protestant friends might call some light idolatry by praying Lauds from the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary… historically known as just “The Little Office”. It’s a much more simple version of the Divine Office. The FSSP version uses the Douay-Rheims translations of the Psalms … so it feels completely new compared to the old Office (which they’ve updated as of a year or two ago… and that’s worse… ’cause the Psalms/Canticles you memorized are just enough different to make everyone say something different, ruining the smooth chant/word).
My eldest daughter, now living on her own, has for the past couple of years returned to her ancestral roots by doing the strict Greek Orthodox fast… which in it’s fullness makes Vegans look like libertines.Report
like butter scraped over too much breadReport
Metaphorically and penitentially… you could totally under butter your bread if that’s something you do every day.Report
Then, indeed, I have been in Lenten underbuttering for almost a year now.Report
I was happy to find out that my local parish is doing Stations of the Cross on Fridays. It’s a very low-contact devotion, sparsely-attended with everyone sitting in pews. So that’ll be part of my Lent. But I’m in the same boat as everyone else: I’ve been giving up so many frivolities that the few I have left are psychological necessities. I have so little variety in my diet that any new restrictions might affect my intake of nutrients. That’s when you reach the point of giving up something and consciously taking up something else nearly identical to replace it, and that hardly feels like a sacrifice. I think my main Lenten activity is going to be some hardcore spiritual reading.Report
Stations are a good practice… spiritual reading has always been tough for me… besides being Devotionally Challenged my other dad joke is that I’m Religious, not Spiritual. I can do Religious Philosophy and Literature, but that’s about it.Report
The toughest thing for me is pacing. You can barrel through lives of the saints. A book of devotions, maybe a paragraph per day. I tend to be a completionist, so that can be an eight-month commitment. Theology is interesting in that the same work can be valuable as a binge or a deep read, but in different ways.
I don’t do enough re-reading. Or, rather, I tend to treat it as a memory exercise, grading myself on how much I remember rather than taking in a work again. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about Chesterton – I assume by your ideology that you’re a fan – but he’s one I’ve probably reread too many times. He’s a bit like Jaybird in that he writes about seven topics obliquely rather than one completely. Any new Chesterton work makes me want to go back and re-glean things from all the other books of his I’ve read.Report
That’s a good way to put it… I have the same memory issue when it comes to re-reading. I can re-read Austen, Waugh and yes, Chesterton.
I’ve read (most?) everything by Chesterton including a sizable chunk of his ILN columns; I prefer him as an essayist rather than an ‘author’… but if we’re honest most of his books are really just strung together essays. His novels strike me as great ideas that he lost interest in mid-way through writing them. But, we should be so lucky as to have such deficiencies of genius.Report