Lent: A 40-day Run-up to the Start of Baseball Season

I feel kind of weird writing about Lent, as I am on record with this:

The way I see it: if God exists that’s fine, but if He doesn’t, I’m cool with that, too.

But I’ve always liked Lent and just because I’m not Christian is — I feel — just a minor technicality.

Why do I like Lent?

Well, it’s the countdown to Easter, which is always a nice time for our family. Not in a religious way, but in the secular Jelly Beans and Chocolate Bunnies sort of way. Dyeing eggs (when we were kids my father was really great at poking holes in the ends of raw eggs and blowing out the insides so that we would have the whole empty eggshells to decorate; I usually just blow raw egg schmutz halfway across the kitchen), the smell of vinegar (I think it helps the dye stick to the eggs), that weird plastic Easter grass you put in the basket, those plastic Easter eggs (the halves of which always get separated and lost or broken so that you never ever can put together a mono-colored egg), how to eat the chocolate bunnies (do you go for the head first, or do you save it for last?) ….

The Easter season evokes a lot of great childhood memories. But as I got older I realized why Easter was important in a religious way. Eventually it came to me that even though Christmas is a much more celebrated occasion, Easter is much more significant as it commemorates the resurrection of Christ.

A while back I worked with a number of people who observed Lent by performing the traditional act of penance by renouncing what they considered to be a bad habit. One fellow gave up coffee; he felt he was drinking too much. Another gave up cheeseburgers, which I thought was rather trivial as far as the holiness of the season goes. But what the heck. Who am I — the non-Christian — to criticize? In chatting with another fellow, he told me in the past his children had tried things like giving up candy, which never lasted long. But that year instead of getting the kids to appreciate Lent by refraining from doing something “bad,” he and his wife were going to encourage them to do something good for each of the 40 days. I thought that was a swell idea, and a much more positive way to demonstrate one’s religious faith.

Since then every year for Lent I choose a theme and try do something that I normally do not do on a daily basis. It’s a nice, defined period which many people observe; I try to use it in a way to help myself become a better person. Sometimes it gets mundane: doing chores around the house that had been neglected. But other times I actually do something that borders on the spiritual: broadening my scope of reading, putting together packages to send to friends stationed overseas, volunteering at a local charity. My favorite Lenten activity was writing a letter or postcard to a friend or relative every day. If life got particularly hectic I’d take a Sunday off, but for the most part I wrote a letter every single day during the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. Email did not count; it had to be a real card or letter. This turned out to be a great exercise, as I’d fallen out-of-touch with a lot of people and many of my aunts and uncles are pretty old and set in their ways and don’t use email. It was a terrific way to re-connect with a lot of people.

So here it is, the end of Ash Wednesday and I still haven’t picked a theme for Lent 2007. I’ve always wanted to read the Bible and maybe I will try to delve into it. American Catholic has a Daily Meditation which I usually read during Lent. A good exercise would be to not only read it every day but also read the passage from scripture that is associated with each meditation.

OK, here goes.

Lent 2007: Gentlemen (and gentlewomen), start your engines!

Today’s meditation:

Start (or continue) a spiritual journal today. Set down spiritual goals that you hope will accompany your concrete penances to return to the Lord.
Joel 2:12-18